classics from a different culture 2

see here for photos of the inscription:

Solving a Riddle Written in Silver
New York Times ^ | September 28, 2004 | JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

Posted on 09/27/2004 9:26:45 PM PDT by 68skylark

The words are among the most familiar and ecumenical in the liturgies of Judaism and Christianity. At the close of a worship service, the rabbi, priest or pastor delivers, with only slight variations, the comforting and fortifying benediction:

"May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; may the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and grant you peace."

An archaeological discovery in 1979 revealed that the Priestly Benediction, as the verse from Numbers 6:24-26 is called, appeared to be the earliest biblical passage ever found in ancient artifacts. Two tiny strips of silver, each wound tightly like a miniature scroll and bearing the inscribed words, were uncovered in a tomb outside Jerusalem and initially dated from the late seventh or early sixth century B.C. - some 400 years before the famous Dead Sea Scrolls.

But doubts persisted. The silver was cracked and corroded, and many words and not a few whole lines in the faintly scratched inscriptions were unreadable. Some critics contended that the artifacts were from the third or second century B.C., and thus of less importance in establishing the antiquity of religious concepts and language that became part of the Hebrew Bible.

So researchers at the University of Southern California have now re-examined the inscriptions using new photographic and computer imaging techniques. The words still do not exactly leap off the silver. But the researchers said they could finally be "read fully and analyzed with far greater precision," and that they were indeed the earliest.

In a scholarly report published this month, the research team concluded that the improved reading of the inscriptions confirmed their greater antiquity. The script, the team wrote, is indeed from the period just before the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. by Nebuchadnezzar and the subsequent exile of Israelites in Babylonia.

The researchers further reaffirmed that the scrolls "preserve the earliest known citations of texts also found in the Hebrew Bible and that they provide us with the earliest examples of confessional statements concerning Yahweh."

Some of the previously unreadable lines seemed to remove any doubt about the purpose of the silver scrolls: they were amulets. Unrolled, one amulet is nearly four inches long and an inch wide and the other an inch and a half long and about half an inch wide. The inscribed words, the researchers said, were "intended to provide a blessing that will be used to protect the wearer from some manner of evil forces."

The report in The Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research was written by Dr. Gabriel Barkay, the archaeologist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel who discovered the artifacts, and collaborators associated with Southern California's West Semitic Research Project. The project leader is Dr. Bruce Zuckerman, a professor of Semitic languages at U.S.C., who worked with Dr. Marilyn J. Lundberg, a Hebrew Bible specialist with the project, and Dr. Andrew G. Vaughn, a biblical historian at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn.

A companion article for next month's issue of the magazine Near Eastern Archaeology describes the new technology used in the research. The article is by the same authors, as well as Kenneth Zuckerman, Dr. Zuckerman's brother and a specialist in photographing ancient documents.

Other scholars not affiliated with the research but familiar with it agreed with the group's conclusions.

They said it was a relief to have the antiquity and authenticity of the artifacts confirmed, considering that other inscriptions from biblical times have suffered from their uncertain provenance.

Scholars also noted that early Hebrew inscriptions were a rarity, and called the work on the amulets a significant contribution to an understanding of the history of religion in ancient Israel, particularly the time of the Judean Monarchy 2,600 years ago.

"These photographs are far superior to what you can see looking at the inscriptions with the naked eye," said Dr. Wayne Pitard, professor of the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern religions at the University of Illinois.

Dr. Pitard said the evidence for the antiquity of the benediction was now compelling, although this did not necessarily mean that the Book of Numbers already existed at that time. Possibly it did, he added, but if not, at least some elements of the book were current before the Babylonian exile.

A part of the sacred Torah of Judaism (the first five books of the Bible), Numbers includes a narrative of the Israelite wanderings from Mount Sinai to the east side of the Jordan River. Some scholars think the Torah was compiled in the time of the exile. A number of other scholars, the so-called minimalists, who are influential mainly in Europe, argue that the Bible was a relatively recent invention by those who took control of Judea in the late fourth century B.C. In this view, the early books of the Bible were largely fictional to give the new rulers a place in the country's history and thus a claim to the land.

"The new research on the inscriptions suggests that that's not true," Dr. Pitard said. In fact, the research team noted in its journal report that the improved images showed the seventh-century lines of the benediction to be "actually closer to the biblical parallels than previously recognized."

Dr. P. Kyle McCarter of Johns Hopkins University, a specialist in ancient Semitic scripts, said the research should "settle any controversy over these inscriptions."

A close study, Dr. McCarter said, showed that the handwriting is an early style of Hebrew script and the letters are from an old Hebrew alphabet, which had all but ceased to be used after the destruction of Jerusalem. Later Hebrew writing usually adopted the Aramaic alphabet.

There was an exception in the time of Roman rule, around the first centuries B.C. and A.D. The archaic Hebrew script and letters were revived and used widely in documents. But Dr. McCarter noted telling attributes of the strokes of the letters and the spelling on the amulets that, he said, ruled out the more recent date for the inscriptions. Words in the revived Hebrew writing would have included letters indicating vowel sounds. The benediction, the scholar said, was written in words spelled entirely with consonants, the authentic archaic way.

The two silver scrolls were found in 1979 deep inside a burial cave in a hillside known as Ketef Hinnom, west of the Old City of Jerusalem. Dr. Barkay, documenting the context of the discovery, noted that the artifacts were at the back of the tomb embedded in pottery and other material from the seventh or sixth centuries B.C. Such caves were reused for burials over many centuries. Near this tomb's entrance were artifacts from the fourth century, but nothing so recent remains in the undisturbed recesses.

It took Dr. Barkay another seven years before he felt sure enough of what he had to announce details of the discovery. Even then, for all their microscopic examination of the inscriptions at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, scholars remained frustrated by the many unreadable words and lines.

About a decade ago, Dr. Barkay enlisted the help of Dr. Zuckerman, whose team had earned a reputation for achieving the near-impossible in photographing illegible ancient documents.

Working with scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Dr. Zuckerman's group used advanced infrared imagining systems enhanced by electronic cameras and computer image-processing technology to draw out previously invisible writing on a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The researchers also pioneered electronic techniques for reproducing missing pieces of letters on documents. By examining similar letters elsewhere in the text, they were able to recognize half of a letter and reconstruct the rest of it in a scribe's own peculiar style.

"We learned a lot from work on the Dead Sea Scrolls," Dr. Zuckerman said. "But at first a processing job like this would send your computers into cardiac arrest. We had to wait for computer technology to catch up with our needs."

As the researchers said in their magazine article, the only reasonably clear aspect of the inscriptions was the Priestly Benediction. Other lines preceding or following the prayer "could barely be seen."

To get higher-definition photographs of the inscriptions, Ken Zuckerman applied an old photographer's technique called "light painting," brought up to date by the use of fiber-optic technology. He used a hand-held light in an otherwise dark room to illuminate a spot on the artifact during a time exposure. In addition, he photographed the artifact at different angles, which made the scratched letters shine in stark relief.

The next step was to convert the pictures to digital form, making possible computer processing that brought out "the subtleties of the surface almost at the micron level." This analysis was particularly successful in joining a partial letter stroke on one side of a crack with the rest of the stroke on the other side. It also enabled the researchers to restore fragments of letters to full legibility by matching them with clear letters from elsewhere in the text.

In this way, the researchers filled in more of the letters and words of the benediction itself and for the first time deciphered meaningful words and phrases in the lines preceding the benediction.

Scholars were particularly intrigued by a statement on the smaller artifact. It reads: "May h[e]/sh[e] be blessed by YHWH, the warrior/helper, and the rebuker of Evil."

Referring to God, Yahweh, as the "rebuker of Evil" is similar to language used in the Bible and in various Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars said. The phraseology is also found in later incantations and amulets associated with Israel, evidence that these artifacts were also amulets, researchers concluded.

"In the ancient world, amulets were taken quite seriously," Dr. Zuckerman said. "There's evil out there, demons, and you need protection. Having this around your neck, you are involving God's presence and protection against harm."

Dr. Esther Eshel, a professor of the Bible at Bar-Ilan and an authority on Hebrew inscriptions, said this was the earliest example of amulets from Israel. But she noted that the language of the benediction was similar to a blessing ("May he bless you and keep you") found on a jar from the eighth century B.C.

If the new findings are correct, the people who wore these amulets may have died before they had to face the limitations of their efficacy. They might then have asked in uncomprehending despair, "Where was Yahweh when the Babylonians swooped down on Jerusalem?"

Other scholars, including those previously skeptical, will soon be analyzing the improved images. In a departure from usual practices, the researchers not only published their findings in a standard print version in a journal but also as an accompanying "digital article," a CD version of the article and the images to allow scholars to examine and manipulate the data themselves.

The research group said, "As far as we are aware, this is the first article to be done in this fashion, but it certainly will not be the last."

cassius hueffer

a couple of days ago i mentioned the spoon river anthology and its relation to epigrams from the greek anthology. so here is one for today:

Cassius Hueffer

THEY have chiseled on my stone the words:
"His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him
That nature might stand up and say to all the world,
This was a man."
Those who knew me smile
As they read this empty rhetoric.
My epitaph should have been:
"Life was not gentle to him,
And the elements so mixed in him
That he made warfare on life
In the which he was slain."
While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,
Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph
Graven by a fool!

I Love Thucy!

Here's a brain bender for you.

I've just started on Thucydides 3. 82 and was almost immediately hit with what Marchant calls "perhaps the most extraordinary anacoluthon in Thuc." All of the commentaries say that the men-de construction sets a participle against a finite verb, but I just can't get myself to believe that:

καὶ ἐν μὲν εἰρήνῃ οὐκ ἂν ἐχόντων πρόφασιν οὐδ’ ἑτοίμων παρακαλεῖν αὐτούς, πολεμουμένων δὲ καὶ ξυμμαχίας ἅμα ἑκατέροις τῇ τῶν ἐναντίων κακώσει καὶ σφίσιν αὐτοῖς ἐκ τοῦ αὐτοῦ προσποιήσει ῥᾳδίως αἱ ἐπαγωγαὶ τοῖς νεωτερίζειν τι βουλομένοις ἐπορίζοντο.

Is it at all possible that the men-de construction is part of an elaborate genitive absolute? (The genitive absolute is, afterall, a kind of circumstantial participle.)

My reading would run thus:

"And though they neither had a reason to nor were prepared to summon them [i.e. the Athenians or the Spartans] in peacetime, but--while they were at war--(they) even (had reason and were willing to summon their) allies together with either side [i.e. Athenians and Spartans again] for the ruin of their opponents and, from the same thing, for their own gain, the introductions [i.e. of the Athenians or Spartans] were easily contrived by those who wanted to change the system a bit."

The argument as I see it is that while the people weren't prepared to bring in foreigners in peacetime, but were in war, those who wanted to shake things up found reasons to bring in foreigners and thus to agitate things sufficiently to effect change.

Does that make sense? Can anyone make better sense?

Am I being unreasonable in refusing to accept "perhaps the most extraordinary anacoluthon" in Thucydides?

ut i am a world-class bodybuilder, the u.s. olympic team didn't want me

did you know ut can govern a concessive clause? it can! and it takes the subjunctive! and the negative is ut non!

elsewhere, i've recently mentioned edgard lee masters. while poking around online, i learned something that was totally new to me and quite apposite for the campus:

In 1909 Masters was introduced to Epigrams from the Greek Anthology, given him by Marion Reedy, editor of Reedy's Mirror of St. Louis. This inspired Masters' most famous work, Spoon River Anthology, realistic and sometimes cynical epitaphs spoken by about 250 persons buried in the graveyard of a village in the Middle West. "You will die, no doubt, but die while living / In depths of azure, rapt and mated, / Kissing the queen-bee, Life!" Original idea for the book came from his mother, with whom he discussed people they used to know in the villages. The work appeared first anonymously in Reedy's Mirror in 1914 and 1915. It was then published anonymously in book form. A sequel, The New Spoon River, appeared in 1924, but it was less successful. Spoon River was Masters's revenge on narrow-mindedness and hypocrisy. It gained a huge popularity, but shattered his position as a respectable member of establishment.

so: you can find the greek anthology even in that most quintessential piece of americana, written in the early 20th century in the american middle west!

catullus as transformer/thundercat

i was just reading d.e.w. wormell's essay called 'catullus as translator' (found in 'the classical tradition: literary and historical studies in honor of harry caplan', ed. luitpold wallach) and came across a couple of points of interest:

Discussing Catullus' version of Sappho's poem Swinburne wrote "a more beautiful translation there never was and never will be; but compared with the Greek it is colourless and bloodless, puffed out by additions and enfeebled by alterations. Let anyone set against each other the first two stanzas, Latin and Greek, and pronounce."

I suspect he is unfairly harsh with Catullus, and I shall perhaps (though perhaps not) have more to say on that in the future.

the second point of interest regards latin vocabulary:

[F]rom Terence onwards exprimere, originally "to take the impression of a seal," comes increasingly to be used of literal translation, often with verbum de (or e) verbo added. The Greeks had, of course, translated documents from other languages on occasion; but Greek translation from the literature of foreign countries appears to be unknown. Latin literature, on the other hand, began with free adaptation of Greek models, and the word used from Plautus onwards to describe this kind of translation is vertere ("to turn," but also, significantly, "to change").

catappho

i am supposed to help this week with a group presentation on catullus 51 and its relationship to sappho 31. it is a pretty interesting investigation, and renders true the words of t.s. eliot, which apply especially well to ancient poets:

Immature poets imitate. Mature poets steal.

Is this the fate that awaits us?

Lonely Italian Pensioner Gets Adopted

Sep 26, 7:57 AM (ET)

By Antonio Denti

SAN POLO DEI CAVALIERI, Italy (Reuters) - A lonely pensioner who turned to Italy's classified pages to find someone willing to "adopt" him as a grandfather is finally heading to his new home and family in northern Italy this weekend.

Giorgio Angelozzi, 80, has lived alone outside Rome with seven cats since his wife died in 1992, but he took the unprecedented step of putting himself up for adoption last month via the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

Not satisfied with just running the advertisement, Italy's main daily ran a front-page story about Angelozzi's plight.

Inundated with offers from families across Italy and as far away as New Zealand, Brazil and the United States, the retired schoolteacher has decided to go to live with Elio and Marlena Riva and their two teenage children in Bergamo, northern Italy.

"I was hit by a torrential downpour. I didn't think I would be able to choose among so many offers," the white-bearded Angelozzi told Reuters during his last hours in his simple two-room flat.

"But I chose the woman whose voice reminded me of my wife."

Angelozzi's appeal struck a chord in family-loving Italy where up to four generations have traditionally lived under the same roof or at least in the same neighborhood.

Today, one in five Italians is over the age of 65 and almost half of them live alone, partly because of the more mobile lifestyle of younger generations. Italy also has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe.

"Remember that my problem is one that affects so many elderly people in Italy. Always remember that," Angelozzi had said during the initial flurry of attention.

He will travel with Marlena Riva to Bergamo on Saturday night where his new home boasts a garden with apple, cherry and pomegranate trees and a beagle called Pablo to replace his cats.

"I will become a grandfather -- this was my plan. I will have the affection of this woman who is already calling me 'daddy' and the children who call me Grandpa Giorgio," said Angelozzi, who has a daughter working abroad with a charity.

The former classics teacher had told potential families he would contribute 500 euros ($615) a month to expenses, but the Rivas say what they really want is a grandfather.

"This grandfather needs help and we need him," Marlena told Corriere. Her relatives live in her native Poland and her husband's parents recently died.

Their 16-year-old daughter Dagmara said: "I just want a grandfather, the rest isn't important." ($1-.8129 Euro)

And you thought we were through with provisos!

I've been getting a lot of pressure to post some Greek syntax rules, so following up on last week's Latin Proviso, I give you the much simpler Greek equivalent.

Interestingly Goodwin refuses to use the term 'proviso' and classes this as a type of consecutive clause, though one could just as easily make the case that a proviso is analogous (in sense though not form) to conditionals. Perhaps understanding this potential overlap Smyth gives the proviso its own place, sandwiched between result clauses and conditionals:

CLAUSES WITH ἐφ' ᾧ AND ἐφ' ᾧτε INTRODUCING A PROVISO

§2279. ἐφ' ᾧ and ἐφ' ᾧτε on condition that, for the purpose of take the infinitive or (less often) the future indicative, and may be introduced, in the principal clause, by the demonstrative ἐπὶ τούτῳ. Negative μή.

αἱρεθέντες ἐφ' ᾧτε συγγράψαι νόμους having been chosen for the purpose of compiling laws X. H. 2.3.11 , ἔφασαν ἀποδώσειν (τοὺς νεκροὺς) ἐφ' ᾧ μὴ καίειν τὰ̄ς οἰκίᾱς the barbarians said they would surrender the dead on condition that he would not burn their houses X. A. 4.2.19, ἀφί̄εμέν σε, ἐπὶ τούτῳ μέντοι, ἐφ' ᾧτε μηκέτι . . . φιλοσοφεῖν we release you, on this condition however, that you no longer search after wisdom P. A. 29c . Future indicative: ξυνέβησαν ἐφ' ᾧτε ἐξίᾱσιν ἐκ Πελοποννήσου ὑπόσπονδοι καὶ μηδέποτε ἐπιβήσονται αὐτῆς they made an agreement on condition that they should depart from the Peloponnesus under a truce and never set foot on it again T. 1.103.

a. These constructions do not occur in Homer. The future indicative is used by Herodotus and Thucydides on the analogy of relative clauses equivalent to consecutive clauses. These authors also use ἐπὶ τοῖσδε for ἐπὶ τούτῳ.

ut i got home, we made dinner

and now i'd like to say something about ut temporal clauses for our syntax point today. did you KNOW ut could take a temporal clause? well, it can, cowboy. and when it does, do you know what mood of the verb it takes? INDICATIVE, which i think is swell! in fact, it usually takes the PERFECT INDICATIVE or the HISTORICAL PRESENT. sometimes it takes the imperfect to show a past state of things, or the pluperfect to show action completed in past time.

hey drum-major, toss me that hyper baton!

yes, i know that was dumb. but what i really wanted to tell you is that i just came across a nice example of hyperbaton in catullus 65:

namque mei nuper Lethaeo in gurgit fratris
pallidulum manans alluit unda pedem...

'For recently has the flowing water washed the pale (dim.) foot of my brother in the Lethaean stream...'

i would also like there to be a transference of the diminutive from the foot itself to the adjective. i don't know why calling his foot a 'little foot' would bring about pathos, but for some reason it seems to me that it would.

red derrick

we haven't had a rhetorical post in a few days. my sincere apologies. in the meantime, here is something i read today in michael trapp's collection 'greek and latin letters' about letter 42 in his collection--a letter by jerome (letter 23 in his own works, written in 384) to marcella on the death of lea. trapp writes in his commentary:

Using a (very) recent even as his cue, Jerome constructs a letter of consolation...which is also a sermon on the superiority of spiritual over worldly values; central to its rhetorical structure is a comparison (synkrisis, comparatio) that combines eulogy of a recently deceased Christian with invective against a recently deceased pagan. Rhetorical polish is evident also in the attention given to rhythm: e.g. in the double cretic clausulae (ex)isse de corpore, (doce)amus in tartaro, quanta mutatio, cernit inquirere.

i admit my complete ignorance about prose rhthym; if anyone cares to comment on it, please feel free!

relax and let the syntax bring you home

today's lesson is on Christian latin and comes from albert blaise's 'A Handbook of Christian Latin: Style, Morphology, and Syntax'.

Quo is sometimes used in place of ut even when the clause does not contain a comparative, which is rare in Classical Latin:
rogabam te...quo sanares dolorem meum, Aug.Conf.2.12; 6.13; 8.13; Tert.Apol.27; 47.

review of 'sailing the wine-dark sea: why the greeks matter'

here is n.s. gill's review of thomas cahill's book 'sailing the wine-dark sea':

The Bottom Line:
In a non-pretentious format, "Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea - Why the Greeks Matter" does indeed show to those interested why the ancient Greeks should matter -- even to modern Americans.

Pros

* Clear, easy reading
* Photographs of representative artwork
* Puts all of ancient Greece into a compact framework

Cons

* Needless profanity and slang
* Some factual errors

Description

* Retells various important Greek myths and puts them in historical context.
* Describes the contributions the Greeks made in all aspects of culture.
* Discusses Plato's Republic's cave and the sex discussion in the Symposium.
* Contains many photographs of ancient Greek sculpture and pottery.
* Compares ancient democracy and leaders with modern politics and political
leaders.
* Catalogues important writers and philosophers.
* Drenched with facts and anecdotes.

Guide Review - Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea - Why the Greeks Matter:
In eight chapters Thomas Cahill covers the history of ancient Greece in a light, informal manner, using anecdotes and comparisons with modern mores and political figures. Although Cahill has been criticized for exactly this modern outlook, this seems to me crucial to a look at a distant world with an eye to making it relevant as the subtitle "Why the Greeks Matter" demands. If we do indeed have problems with people who are racist, classist, and sexist, as Cahill says the ancient Greeks were, they must have other redeeming characteristics if they're to be worth studying. They developed art, adapted Egyptian mathematics, added vowels to the Semitic consonants to produce the alphabet, produced innovations in various literary fields, created science and philosophy, and introduced the democratic system. It is a bit hard to decide the audience for Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea. It is not a scholarly work, nor is it a work for people who can't tell Ancient from Medieval History. A certain familiarity with ancient Greece seems crucial, but if you already have that understanding, "Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea" is somewhat redundant. Still, it is hard to keep the wealth of detail in mind at all times, so Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea seems a refresher for those of us who originally learned about ancient Greece -- whether at the Met, like Cahill, or in school -- in our youth and have since forgotten some of the lessons we learned.

and here is what publisher's weekly had to say:

In this elegant introduction to Greek life and thought, Cahill provides the same majestic historical survey he has already offered for the Irish, the Jews and the Christians. He eloquently narrates the rise of Greek civilization and cannily isolates six archetypal figures representative of the development of Greek thinking. He opens with a consideration of Homer's Iliad and its glorification of the warrior way as an exemplum of life in the Greek state. Cahill then proceeds to offer an evolutionary look at the rise and fall of Greece by examining the wanderer (Odysseus), the politician (Solon), the playwright (Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides), the poet (Sappho), the philosopher (the pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle) and the artist (Praxiteles). These figures provide lessons in how to feel, how to rule, how to party, how to think and how to see. For example, Cahill contends that Odysseus reveals longing and desire for love, domestic peace and his homeland, while the rage of Achilles offers us lessons in the way to fight for one's homeland. The book is full of whimsical characterizations, such as the depiction of Socrates as a "squat, ugly, barefoot man who did not bathe too often." The author includes generous portions of the original writings in order to provide the flavor of the Greek way. Once again, Cahill gracefully opens up a world that has provided so much of Western culture's characteristic way of thinking.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

desine fata deum flecti sperare precando...

i'm sorry to say that we didn't get this up yesterday, but better late than never.
yesterday was the anniversary of vergil's death in 19 BC at brindisii.

also, around this time are the approximate dates for initiation into the eleusinian mysteries.

(via about.com).

Hendecasyllabics and the Epigrammatic Tradition

The question was posed whether the hendecasyllabics of Catullus are epigrams, and it was noted that Martial's are.

I thought I'd take up the question, and started with the meter. As others have noted any eleven syllable line can be called hendecayllabic, and I quickly found reference to both Sapphic and Phalaecean hendecasyllabics.

The Phalaecean is the meter of our poet, yet solid information is hard to come by. Even harder to find is information on the man who lent his name, Phalaecus. The helpful little handbook on Greek and Latin meter by Rosenmeyer, Ostwald and Halporn (is that the order?) is not helpful here. In fact you'd think no Greek had ever used the meter, but you'd be wrong.

As it happens the meter was used considerably throughout the Alexandrian period, and according the West in his Greek Metre was the only Aeolic meter in constant use through to the imperial period. It wasn't until I'd turned to West that I found more than a hint that the meter preceded Catullus. (That's not entirely true. Some journal article on JSTOR mentioned a Phalaecean in a sepulchral inscription, published by Wilamowitz, but that was my best lead till West.)

West pointed me toward a number of extant Greek epigrams in the phalaecean meter, and his list included two in the A.P. which came as a surprise to everyone as most of the collection seems to be in elegiacs. This has probably led many to the conclusion that elegiacs are the sole or the best meter for epigrams, though this ignores the plethora of verse inscriptions and epigrams in hexameter.

But I digress. On to the elusive Phalaecus. He's not an easy figure to track down, but through L'Année philologique I was able to find an excellent article (one of only two on the subject) published in Greek! (Skiadas, A. D. - ὁ ποιητὴς Φάλαικος. EEAth 1967-1968 XVIII : 65-88.)

Skiadas says that Phalaecus was not the first to use the meter, but was the first to turn this Aeolic lyric measure to use in epigrams. Couple with the testimony on the meter's use and popularity as treated by West, this article goes a long toward establishing the meter as comfortably within the epigrammatic tradition.

If we turn back to Catullus carmen L, treated here previously, in light of Maria Carilli's 1979 article, in which she related that poem to a fragment of the Alexandrian epigrammatist Hedylus, everything will tie together nicely.(Carilli, M. G. "Rapporti tra Catullo e gli epigrammisti greci." RAAN 1979 LIV : 163-184.)

The imagery of the poetry exchange in carmen L echoes closely the kind of poetic affair treated in the Hedylus fragment: I suggest a light-hearted round of wine and erotic epigrams, though the subject could change with the occasion.

The important point for us however is that carmen L is written in hendecasyllabics: Phalaecean hendecasyllabics.

It is an epigram about the writing of epigrams in a largely forgotten epigrammatic meter. It would behoove us all to reconsider the arbitrary classification of Catullus' poems that calls these epigrams, and those something else.

Martial knew better than we.

catullus and his world

i just finished reading the first chapter of t.p. wiseman's catullus and his world, called 'a world not ours'. it is quite eye-opening, and disturbing. catullus includes a number of incredibly violent images in his poems, and wiseman comments (p.5):

What lies behind these sadistic imaginings is the Roman idea of punishment, for that is what Catullus wants to exact.

It is striking that throughout Roman literature, from Plautus to Prudentius, we find instruments of torture referred to as something familiar.

he goes on to describe just how ubiquitous violence and cruelty was in the roman world of the late republic (and early empire). he goes on to remind the reader of the public nature of such violence (p.7):

Judicial torture was also done in public: at the entrance to the Subura the bloody scourges hung ready for use, and any passer-by in the Forum might see, and hear, the dreadful carnifices in their red caps (to mark them out as men beyond the pale) inflicting agony on some criminal before his execution. It was a spectacle to enjoy: the populace could 'feast their eyes and satisfy their souls' at the torture and death of a notorious malefactor.

furthermore, there was no police force to protect one from harm (p.8):

A passing rustic makes an untimely joke? A humble neighbour's dog keeps you awake? Out with the whips, and have the culprit beaten--if he dies, too bad. In a city without a police force, where self-help was basic to the operation of the law, the humble citizen needed a powerful friend for his protection, and the great men of the time went about with armed escorts as a matter of course.

this is why i argued, when 'The Passion' was criticized due to its extreme violence, in spite of the Gospel writers not having included such detail in their accounts, that these criticisms were ill-founded. there is a reason the Gospel writers did not include the gruesome violence visually depicted in the movie: they did not need to. such brutality, at the state's hands, would have been commonplace for someone living in the roman empire. as wiseman writes, quoting suetonius' life of vespasian (f.n.18), 'It was, after all, a city where a dog might pick up a human hand in the street.'

don't disguise your provis(o)

i dedicate these two provisos that i just came across in catullus 114.5-6 (ad mentulam) to dennis:

quare concedo sit dives, dum omnia desint.
saltum laudemus, dum modo ipse egeat.

what's certain in this life? death and (syn)taxes!

time for a latin syntax rule. hmmm...possibly we should also begin including greek syntax. anyway, for the moment, placet mihi to do some latin. for the moment, we are leaving questions behind and switching to the genitive.

A noun used to limit or define another, and NOT meaning the same person or thing, is put in the Genitive.
Examples:
libri Ciceronis, the books of Cicero
inimici Caesaris, Caesar's enemies
vacatio laboris, a respite from toil
petitio consulatus, candidacy for the consulship
regnum civitatis, royal power over the state

rhetoric schmeteric

first of all, thanks go out to rogue classicism for the links and kind words.

second, the weekend's over and it's time to get back to figures and tropes. today's rhetorical figure is...

PROSOPOPEIA: personification. For example: 'The pine trees smiled wide and danced a jig to the tune of bob seger's "the fire down below".' i encourage you to submit your own prosopopeia in the comments section. the best one (as decided completely according the caprice of dennis and me, and possibly magister coke) will be awarded ITS OWN ENTRY, with A COOL TITLE.

personify away!

question of the day

'What am I doing? Why am I doing it?'
--Title of a 'conversation with graduate students', taking place at Princeton University on 20 September 2004.

quote of the day

'I'm all in favor of an empire that is large, that is based on conquering, and that has room for quirky nerds.'
--Peter Brown, 9/19/04

Calling Magister Coke

This will be meaningless to most of our readers, so let me apologize at the start.

But Magister Coke, please let us all know how things are going. The Campus extends far beyond the Main Line.

Privy to Livy ... Proviso-a-Go-Go?

Russell T.'s sight reading session is one of the few true joys of my week, outside of the Roche or course. He walked us through part of book one like a timeless tour guide on a gentle Autumn morn.

Let the world know that there's little in this world more soothing than Russell T.'s casual delivery. And the man knows good beer.

But there are many things in this world which stand in violent contrast both to Russel T. and to Livy.

Some of those things are the Latin letters of the Church fathers, one of which you've read about recently. But light finds a way even in the darkest of places, here in a letter of Augustine (who is infinitely more readable than Paulinus and quickly repairing my opinion of Late Latin).

On the first page of a letter written by Augustine to Jerome I found not one but two Proviso clauses, one positive, one negative, and each construed with a different adverb. So without further ado, the Proviso clause, stolen from A&G:

CLAUSES OF PROVISO

§528. Dum, modo, dummodo, and tantum ut, introducing a Proviso, take the Subjunctive. The negative with these particles is nē:

* ōderint dum metuant (Off. 1.97) , let them hate, if only they fear.
* valētūdō modo bona sit (Brut. 64) , provided the health be good.
* dummodo inter mē atque tē mūrus intersit (Cat. 1.10) , provided only the wall (of the city) is between us.
* tantum ut sciant (Att. 16.11.1) , provided only they know.
* modo nē sit ex pecudum genere (Off. 1.105) , provided [in pleasure] he be not of the herd of cattle.
* id faciat saepe, dum nē lassus fīat (Cato R. R. 5.4) , let him do this often, provided he does not get tired.
* dummodo ea (sevēritās) nē variētur (Q. Fr. 1.1.20) , provided only it (strictness) be not allowed to swerve.
* tantum nē noceat (Ov. M. 9.21) , only let it do no harm.

NOTE.--The Subjunctive with modo is hortatory or optative; that with dum and dummodo, a development from the use of the Subjunctive with dum in temporal clauses, § 553 (compare the colloquial so long as my health is good, I don't care).

The Hortatory Subjunctive without a particle sometimes expresses a proviso:--

* sint Maecēnātēs, nōn deerunt Marōnēs (Mart.Mart. 8.56.5 ) , so there be Mœcenases, Virgils will not be lacking.

The Subjunctive with ut (negative nē) is sometimes used to denote a proviso, usually with ita in the main clause:--

* probāta condiciō est, sed ita ut ille praesidia dēdūceret (Att. 7.14.1) , the terms were approved, but only on condition that he should withdraw the garrisons.

NOTE.--This is a development of the construction of Characteristic or Result.

For a clause of Characteristic expressing Proviso, see § 535. d.

nursery rhymes for old people

today we introduced our greek class to the fact that, in greek nouns of the first declension, etas turn into alphas after epsilon, iota and rho (or, rather, etas go back to the alpha found in other dialects, about which subject i'm sure dennis will have something to say). to help remember this, i came up with a little rhyme. i haven't shared it with the class yet, but i'm thinking about it. it goes like this:

epsilon, iota, rho,
etas all to alpha go.

classics from a different culture

it was recently Rosh Hashana. Thus, here is merriam-webster's word-of-the-day for 16 september:

shofar \SHOH-far\ noun

: a ram's-horn trumpet blown by the ancient Hebrews in battle and during religious observances and used in modern Judaism especially during Rosh Hashanah and at the end of Yom Kippur

Example sentence:
The first blast of the shofar echoed within the sanctuary, announcing the beginning of the High Holy Days.

Did you know?
One of the shofar's original uses was to proclaim the Jubilee year (a year of emancipation of Hebrew slaves and restoration of alienated lands to their former owners) or the anointing of a new king. Today, it is mainly used in synagogues during the High Holy Days. It is blown during the month of Elul (the 12th month of the civil year or the 6th month of the ecclesiastical year in the Jewish calendar) until the end of Rosh Hashanah and again at the end of the last service on Yom Kippur as reminders to attend to spiritual matters. The custom is to sound the shofar in broken notes resembling sobbing and wailing followed by a long unbroken sound.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

and, in case you're interested, here is a little bit more about it:

ROSH HASHANAH:
Origins

By: Amy J. Kramer

Rosh Hashanah, which literally means the head of the year, commemorates the anniversary of the creation of the world. It is celebrated on the first and second days of the seventh Hebrew month, Tishri. Depending on the solar calendar, Rosh Hashanah occurs in September or October.

Rosh Hashanah, when all living things are judged, is often referred to as the beginning of the Jewish New Year. However, the Hebrew month of Nissan, in which Passover is celebrated, is the first month of the Jewish calendar.

Rosh Hashanah is actually only one of four symbolic Jewish new year celebrations. The Talmud identifies these as:

* Nisan: The Hebrew month of Passover marks the birth of the Jews as a free
nation. It was also the symbolic new year day for kings.
* Elul: The Hebrew month preceding Rosh Hashanah was the symbolic new year for
tithing animals, an ancient form of giving tzedakah, or charity;
* Shevat: The Hebrew month of the holiday, Tu Bishvat, was the symbolic new year
for trees.
* Tishri: The Hebrew month of Rosh Hashanah, was the symbolic anniversary of the
creation of the world.

The commandment to observe Rosh Hashanah is found in the second and third books of the Torah, the five books of Moses:

In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall be a solemn rest unto you, a memorial proclaimed with the blast of horns, a holy convocation... and you shall bring an offering made by fire unto the Lord. Leviticus 23:24-5

In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a holy day; you shall not work at your occupations. You shall observe it as a day when the shofar is trumpeted. Numbers 29:1

The first two days of Tishri were not called Rosh Hashanah until Talmudic times. Jewish leaders of the day may have been reluctant to promote large celebrations around a fall new year because moon festivals were common among pagan religions. Many Near Eastern religions, for example, celebrated divine coronation festivals in the Fall.

By the fourth century, B.C.E., when the Jews returned from Babylonian exile to build the second temple, Rosh Hashanah was well established. By the time of the Mishnah, the codification of Jewish oral traditon, Rosh Hashanah had developed a more serious tone. Now, having suffered the loss of the second temple, Rosh Hashanah emphisized the anniversary of creation, and of G-d as judge, dispensing mercy or justice to those who do or do not repent their sins.

The Torah refers to Rosh Hashanah as Yom Teruah, the day of sounding the shofar, the traditional ram's horn. It is also called Yom Ha'Din, the day of judgement as well as Yom Hazikaron, the day of remembering. Yom Hazikaron is a reference to the patriarch Abraham who offered his only son, Isaac, to G-d as proof of his obedience. As the result of his readiness to sacrifice Isaac, G-d caused a ram to appear and be killed instead. According to Jewish tradition, this sacrifice is believed to have occurred the first of Tishri.

Today, aside from liturgical additions and literary interpretations made by poets during the Middle Ages, the customs, traditions, mood and spirit of Rosh Hashanah remain basically unchanged.

don'tne you want your syntax lesson for the day?

continuing on the question theme from yesterday, here's today's syntax point (from AG):

When the enclitic -ne is added to a negative word,--as in nonne,--an AFFIRMATIVE answer is expected. The particle num suggests a NEGATIVE answer.

how does this rhetoric accentuate my figure?

that's right, kids--it's the moment you've all been waiting for. drumroll please...and today's rhetorical figure is...

HYPERBATON: violation of the usual order of words. for examples of this, read ANYTHING by ausonius or paulinus of nola. an example in english might be: 'read this really to letter hard is' instead of 'this letter is really hard to read'. to put a normal english sentence into hyperbaton, i recommend that you simply think about the sentence for a moment, then think about what it would sound like if yoda said it, and then write that down.

putting the 'syn' back in syntax

and here is a latin syntactical rule for you today (courtesy of allen & greenough):

A question of SIMPLE FACT, requiring the answer YES or NO, is formed by adding the enclitic -ne to the emphatic word.

as the day has gone on today and i have continued attempting to read the correspondence of augustine and paulinus, i have been further confirmed in my belief that 'quod' is the most difficult word in the latin language. perhaps this will warrant a post in futurum.

that is all for now.

trope time

here is today's rhetorical figure:

PARONOMASIA: the use of words of like sound. for example: 'dennis the menace'. or: 'the sound wound down'. you could say that at the end of a concert given by one of your heavy-metal jerks. remember: for the price of two of their CDs, you could get a thucydides OCT--in the words of JHG, a priceless treasure forever.

cui dono lepidum...

i'm too tired tonight to write my catullus post. in lieu of that, though, i'd like to inaugurate a new feature, which is shamelessly self-serving, but which i also hope is helpful to our loyal readers. to wit: we shall now commence our review of rhetorical figures and tropes, taking our starting point from the allen and greenough's 'new latin grammar'.

today's figure is ANTONOMASIA--the use of a proper for a common noun, or the reverse.

examples:

sint Maecenates, non deerunt, Flacce, Marones: so there be patrons (like Maecenas), poets (like Vergil) will not be lacking, Flaccus (Mart. viii. 56. 5).

illa furia et pestis: that fury and plague (i.e. Clodius).

Homeromastix: scourge of Homer (i.e. Zoilus).

Catullus 50: Poetry 'Couched' in Erotic Terms

Many people seem intent on defending Catullus against charges of homosexuality, and apart from being stupid, it's unnecessary.

Hesterno, Licini, die otiosi
multum lusimus in meis tabellis,
ut convenerat esse delicatos:
scribens versiculos uterque nostrum
ludebat numero modo hoc modo illoc,     5
reddens mutua per iocum atque vinum.
Atque illinc abii tuo lepore
incensus, Licini, facetiisque,
ut nec me miserum cibus iuvaret
nec somnus tegeret quiete ocellos,     10
sed toto indomitus furore lecto
versarer, cupiens videre lucem,
ut tecum loquerer simulque ut essem.
At defessa labore membra postquam
semimortua lectulo iacebant,           15
hoc, iucunde, tibi poema feci,
ex quo perspiceres meum dolorem.
Nunc audax cave sis, precesque nostras,
oramus, cave despuas, ocelle,
ne poenas Nemesis reposcat a te.       20
Est vemens dea: laedere hanc caveto.

William C. Scott is typical. In 1969 he wrote a lot of romantic nonsense about a man of genuine taste and perception discovering a true soul and passionately recording the find for posterity. Many who followed him assumed the same and continued to rephrase his sentiments. These scholars tend to write about what the poem is not, ignoring what it is.

It is not, they say, about homosexuality. And after many pages stomping vainly along a path much tread they conclude that Catullus uses erotic imagery to express the depth of his passionate (heterosexual) friendship. Content with the old dust on their shoes they trot away accomplished critics.

We would have been better served had they simply written 'I concur' in Scott's margins and not bloated our journals with pap.

They are right to say that it is not about homosexuality, but that is all, and it is disappointing as Catullus has done his best to make things clear.

1) We traded dirty little verses yesterday over wine.
2) Here's a dirty little verse to tell you how much I enjoyed it.
3) Let's do it again sometimes.

It really is that simple.

This is a poem as much about Catullus' wit and charms as it is about Calvus'. Our poet's use of sexually charged terms that admit often of double meanings is dictated by the brief description of the previous day's activities.

Writing versiculi over wine points to one thing, and that is the erotic epigram. Recall carmen 16. It is precisely for a misinterpretation of his versiculi that Catullus threatens his critics with sexual humiliation. The power of the piece is centered in his declaration that the poet and his work are not one, and that 'it becomes a poet to be chaste,' but not his versiculi. As professor Gaisser noted the kind of poems he is referring are probably not the Lesbia, but poems such as carmen 48, which is a perfect erotic epigram on desire of a youth.

Accepting the versiculi to be what they are elsewhere in Catullus, dirty little verse or erotic epigrams, we can accept the sexual imagery suggested throughout. Ludo is often sex play of any kind, forms of convenio can stand in for coitus (cf. e.g. συνουσία), delicatus refers to illicit sex, jocus to dirty talk, labor first to the work of prostitutes then to sex in general, and membrum means genitals whether singular or plural.

The genius of the piece is in writing about the composition of a certain kind of poetry in its own terms. This is the charm of the piece, and it pretends to nothing more. The passion for a friend is no more expressed than the passion for a lover. The poet is simply having fun.

As scholars writing recently tend to parrot Scott, they overlook a 1979 piece by Maria Carilli which explores elements of Greek epigram in several of Catullus' poems. On poem 50 Carilli points to an epigram by the Alexandrian Hedylos (Carilli points to Gow-Page, but in my haste I couldn't locate it, though the text is taken from Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 11.45.19).

ἐξ ἠοῦς εἰς νύκτα καὶ ἐκ νυκτὸς πάλι Σωκλῆς
εἰς ἠοῦν πίνει τετραχόοισι κάδοις,
εἶτ’ ἐξαίφνης που τυχὸν οἴχεται. ἀλλὰ παρ’ οἶνον
Σικελίδου παίζει πουλὺ μελιχρότερον,
ἐστὶ δὲ δή, πολὺ <δὴ> στιβαρώτερος. ὡς δ’ ἐπιλάμπει
ἡ χάρις, ὥστε φίλει καὶ γράφε καὶ μέθυε.

Odd grammar aside (ὥστε + imperative?), the piece shows the some key themes of the writing session described by Catullus already in place among Alexandrian epigrammatists.

Oddly enough, this poem reads as a Callimachean program.

From dawn into the night and from night back into dawn, Socles, you drink from three-gallon vessels. Then suddenly, somehow, by chance it’s gone! But by the Sicilian’s wine you play much more sweetly, and it is in fact quite a bit stronger. How grace shines forth! So go ahead and love, and write, and get drunk!

The Sicilian, as Carilli reminds us, is Asclepiades, the purported founder of the Alexandrian erotic epigram. Here the poet Socles is encouraged to 'love, write, and get drunk' on the wine of Asclepiades, which is sweeter than his old stock, which has dried up anyway. This is reminscent of Callimachus' claim in the Aetia prologue that poetry is sweeter his way. 'Let others let fly their arrows far against the Mede.'

Asclepiades, however, is known to have praised the Lyde, so his apparent connection with a Callimachean recusatio is bot puzzling and potentially fruitful.

Carilli points out too that Nemesis is a stock figure at the ends of erotic epigrams, and that semimortua is a translation of Philodemus' ἡμιθανές, a reference to his half-limp penis (AP 11.30).

In addition, no one has paid much attention to the verb versarer which stands at the start of line 12, and which conjures the writing of verse as it describes the poets 'limbs' rolling around restless on his bed. This is an explicit clue from the poet that the poetry is meant by the image of the lover's body.

One last note before I go. The phrase 'illinc abii ... incensus' has led most people to assume that Catullus was returned from a party at Calvus' house, and this has even prompted one old editor to wonder whether the text should be emended to read 'in tueis tabellis.'

There is no reason for this. Illing need not be treated as a concrete term, 'from that place,' but can instead be treated metaphorically (it is even used to refer to people). I suggest 'and from that (experience) I have come away (into a state of being) inflamed by your wit.' Abii often means 'to come away' into a certain state, rather than to physically depart from a physical place. 'In meis tabellis' implies that the party took place at Catullus' house, and that our poets prayers in line 18 involve an invitation by Calvus.

today is 14 september

you heard me right. today is september 14. that means that on this day, drusus died in AD 23 and domitian became emperor in AD 81.

also, in honor of our alexandrian class, i thought i would post this brief review of lionel casson's book Libraries in the Ancient World:

In "Libraries in the Ancient World" Lionel Casson discusses all the important topics about ancient writing and libraries, and supplements the chapters on ancient Mesopotamian libraries, the Greek, Alexandrian, and Roman libraries, the evolution of codex from papyrus roll, and the beginning of the Middle Ages, with ample diagrams and useful photographs. Among other intriguing anecdotes, Casson explains the development of parchment from papyrus as the result of a rivalry between Ptolemy V and the king of Pergamum (whence the word parchment), both of whose cities held important libraries. It was parchment on wooden tablets that were later joined together to make the first books. Greek libraries housed scrolls, but provided no room for reading and contained only Greek literature. In Republican Rome, Greek literature was greatly admired, copied by booksellers, and imitated by early Roman writers. Roman libraries in the time of Augustus had two rooms, one for Greek literature and one for Roman, which meant there needed to be some degree of selectivity about what to store, and that, in turn, required competent librarians. In the late Republic, the first public libraries and reading rooms were introduced, and later some were connected with the social centers known as public baths. Although there is a wealth of information in "Libraries in the Ancient World," Casson writes so that a reader can breeze through Libraries in the Ancient World.

essays on demand

here is an article comparing alexander pope and eminem (thanks to classics in contemporary culture for the link).

New Weekly Feature!

Mark your calendars kids because by this time tomorrow you should find not one but two original contributions to Catullan poetics right here at the Campus.

Expect this feature to recur weekly, though we'll move beyond the Big Cat soon enough.

So on tomorrow's plate:

Eric on Carmen I
Dennis on Carmen L

Be there!

thoughts on euergetism

here are peter jones' thoughts on 'ancient and modern' from the spectator for 11 september 2004:

Today’s rich are not, apparently, giving enough of their wealth to good causes. The ancients would have known why.

Euergesia — ‘benefaction, philanthropy’ — had always been seen as a virtue of the well-born Greek (for Aristotle it was an act that characterised the ‘magnificent’ man). It was, therefore, highly popular among the great and good of the Hellenic world, as the vast number of inscriptions and statues attesting such ‘euergetism’ indicate, whether erected by the euergetist himself or a grateful people. The culture spread to Rome too. Pliny the Younger, for example, endowed his home town, Como, with a school and a library, and in his will bequeathed it a public bath and a capital sum to give everyone a free annual dinner. The emperor himself was the ultimate euergetist: public buildings, banquets, free bread, extravagant games, cheap baths, etc., were all treated as if they were personal benefactions to the Roman people.

In 5th-century bc Athens, however, where radical democracy reached its full flowering under Pericles, the culture of liberal benefaction was slightly frowned on. The reason was that the citizens saw each other as equals, and suspected any citizen who lavished benefactions on others of trying to gain political ascendancy. If benefaction, therefore, was not to dry up, it would have to be under the Assembly’s direction. As a result, Athenians invented the leitourgia system (our ‘liturgy’), under which the 300 richest citizens in each year were ordered to subsidise a number of state activities, like the annual drama festivals, equipping a trireme, and so on.

This sounds like a New Labour paradise, but unfortunately we already have a tax system that achieves the same purpose all too well. Is the state, then, the universal euergetist? No. It certainly sets itself up as the universal provider, but simply grabs our money and spends it how it likes. The point about ancient euergetism is that it was personal and reciprocal: it served the interests of the giver — everything from patriotic display to political self-advancement — as well as that of the recipient.

There will always be saints to whom the ‘what’s in it for me?’ mentality is anathema. In their absence, however, good causes will be properly served again only when the giver is as much the ‘good cause’ as the cause to which he is giving.

it's merMAN!!!

well, i didn't think i'd soon see the day where i would stumble across such an obvious connection between the roman 'neoteric' poets and the critically-acclaimed, ground-breaking film zoolander. but i just did, in t.p. wiseman's book Cinna the Poet. i quote (p.55):

Calvus' "Io" was about the girl whom amorous Jupiter made into a heifer, while the subject of Cornificius' "Glaucus" was presumably the fisherman turned merman whose inamorata Scylla was changed by Circe into a sea-monster.

the crucial word to note here is 'merman', which also appears in zoolander in the pivotal bar-scene involving derek and his estranged father. i did not know that this word had an existence outside of the movie.

but boy am i glad it does.

quote of the day

'Don't lose sleep over Greek. EVER. It's a nice language. Sort of.'
--RH, 9/13/04

runner-up:

'Adjectives--they're just like nouns! Yay!!!'
--RH, 9/13/04

Last night's Greek sight-reading went really well, and the pizza was well appreciated.

Thanks go out to Eric for organizing the new weekly event, and for preparing the material and conducting the night like a pro.

Odd looks go out to Jason for dressing like a professor.

a ground-breaking new theory

Not really, but I thought I should share my lunacy with our faithful readers lest they think sanity a cohort of the academy. Be warned. This is what a poor upbringing in Latinity and too little sleep produces.

It is my contention that the gerund and the gerundive are wholly unrelated.

I've been wondering for a while about the old Indo-European -r/-n stems and the Latin gerund. We know that the infinitive is used in place of the nominative and the accusative of the gerund. We also know that the infinitive and the gerund are both old verbal nouns. Even if they did not initially comprise a de-verbal -r/-n declension (e.g. Gk. u(dwr, u(datos wherein the -a- is a vocalized nu), it may be helpful to treat them so. A simple example:

N. amare, 'loving'
G. amandi, 'of loving'
D. amando, 'to/for loving'
Ac. amare, 'loving'
Ab. amando, 'by loving'

The one wrench thrown in the works here is the accusative with a preposition, which would befor example 'ad amandum.' This has doubtless arisen through comparison with the gerundive, which I think was originally the middle participle equivalent to Greek -menos. Sihler treats of this possibility briefly, though the evidence for a shift from *-mnos to -ndus is at best unclear.

But I find it helpful to think of it all this way because the gerund and gerundive are not given the attention due in early education and, much like the supine, are a source of endless difficulty for people like me who learned Latin from underprepared grad students through a high school textbook.

If we treat the Latin gerund in this way, its primary difference from the Greek infinitive is in that it expresses case through inflection while the Greek does so through the article.

If you think that's crazy, wait until I post my thoughts about the supine.

UPDATE: I found a document on my computer filled with things like this, and here's the section on -nd-. The Greek and the macrons require a good unicode font, so enter the 21st century already:

nd infix (as in the so-called gerundive—but not in the gerund.)

This is best treated as an old marker of the middle voice. The gerundive would then properly be a present middle participle [cf. verbal adjectives in (u)ndus, which are participial and often have reflexive force].`

A&G collect together with this the suffixes minus and mnus, which are found in some old participial nouns like fēmina and alumnus. This was prescient on the part of A&G as the most attractive formal explanation for the gerundive suffix is a syncopated middle participle ending of the ομενο type familiar from Greek. Why mn should result in nd at some stage of Latin development is presently beyond us, but some brave adherent of the comparative method may find a sliver of evidence in the following pair:

Gk. τέμνω, L. tondeō , “to cut”

In much the same way that the supine is compared with and taught alongside the perfect passive participle on the grounds of a formal coincidence , the so-called gerundive is named after the gerund on the basis of its ending alone.

The mysterious gerund, like the supine (and to a lesser extent the infinitive), is simply an old type of verbal noun gone defective and used only in special constructions.

quote of the day

on the interpretation of the use of the imperfect tense in ancient greek as a way to be able to make statements about an author:

'You'll find articles written on this: "His use of the imperfective tense there shows that...he was crazy, or that he had been drinking, or blah blah blah."'
--R. Hamilton, 9/10/04

runner-up:

'[The sentence] says, "Virtue is the origin of life for a man." Of course, chaos is the origin of life for a man, according to Hesiod.'
--R. Hamilton, 9/10/04

did you know?

did you know that the sinologist owen lattimore, brother of classicist richmond lattimore (who was a cryptographer for the U.S. in WWII) was accused of being in cahoots with the Communist Party and was denounced by Sen. Joseph McCarthy? I didn't. for more views, see also here and here.

i can't think of a title

since we had a calendar feature the other day, i thought i would also include this description of the roman calendar, found here, and perhaps also will soon post about the athenian calendar:

Prior to the reform (replacement is a better word) of the calendar by Julius Caesar, the Romans used a calendar which was made up of twelve familiarly-named months of varying lengths: Martius, Maius, Quintilis (later known as Julius), and October each had 31 days; Ianuarius, Aprilis, Iunius, Sextilis (later known as Augustus), September, November and December each had 29 days; Februarius had 28 days. That provided for a 355-day year which is, probably uncoincidentally, the length of a lunar year. Obviously it wouldn't take very long for such a calendar to get out of whack with reality, so it was the practice (apparently) to regularly 'intercalate' a month (i.e. insert a new month) of 22 (sometimes 23) days in alternating years after the festival known as Terminalia (Feb. 23). This month was referred to as Intercalaris and would have the last five days of February added onto it, resulting in a month of either 27 or 28 days. [Something I've never quite figured out: given the apparent importance of birthdays to the Romans (to judge by epigraphy), when they claimed to have lived 'x number of years, x number of months, x number of days', how long were the years?].

Unfortunately even with the provisions for intercalations, the calendar of the Roman Republic often went out of whack anyway and Julius Caesar decided to fix things once and for all (or so he thought). By virtue of his being pontifex maximus, he threw out the old calendar and replaced it with a calendar which had 365.25 days, which astronomers in Egypt and elsewhere had long known to be the actual length of a 'tropical year'. Caesar also fiddled with the number of days in the months to what we are used to, and made provisions for an extra day in February (February 24 happened twice; that would be handy if you had a term paper due, no?). Unfortunately, because the Romans counted inclusively and the folks who told Caesar about this calendar didn't, subsequent pontifices were adding a day every three years instead of every four, and so Augustus would later have to correct this.

The final thing to note about the Roman calendar is that they had a somewhat peculiar system of deciding the 'number' of the day. The first day of every month was known as Kalendae (the 'kalends'); the fifth day (or, in certain months, the seventh) was referred to as Nonae (the 'nones'), the thirteenth (or, in certain months, the fifteenth) was referred to as Idus (the 'Ides'). All other days were referred to by counting backwards from these fixed points in the month. And so, for example, while the Roman equivalent of January 1 would be Kalendae Ianuariae (often abbreviated Kal. Ian.), January 2 would be designated ante diem IV Nonas Januarias (IV Non. Ian). And since January is a day when the 'Nones' falls on the equivalent of the fifth, January 4 was designated pridie Nonas Ianuarias (pr Non. Ian).

The upshot of all this is that This Day in Ancient History provides the date equivalencies according to the calendar implemented by Julius Caesar, using the peculiar system of designating days described above. In some cases, this will be somewhat anachronistic, especially when providing day equivalencies for events which happened (or festivals celebrated) prior to this reform (e.g. there was no such thing as September 30 prior to Julius Caesar's calendar). As far as I'm aware, though, ceteris paribus, the days will only be one or two days off and I'm sure that won't offend the pax deorum.

Paulinus, don't malign us!

Erock has been keeping the Campus going strong for all our faithful readers, while in the meantime I've been trying to re-learn how to read Latin. It may not be the best idea to do that through 5th c. Latin written in three different meters and often with little regard for the comfortable conventions of Latin syntax.

The good thing is that I've hit a stride and have pounded through more than three hundred lines today.

The bad news is that I failed to pass both the Greek and Latin sight exams. I was congratulated 'for attempting both,' which I thought a bit odd, and was told that my Menander was fine but the rest of the Greek 'not so.' After spending a semester with Plato, Lysias, Thucydides, and Gil Prose, and having never so much as glanced at a page of Menander before the exam, I found that a little difficult to understand.

But there you have it. I'm tempted to change an option on the poll. I should probably add Menander since that's apparently all I can read well enough anyway.

On a completely unrelated note, this computer in the library saves information entered in forms on web pages, and when I tried to enter a title just now one entry in the list read, '26 yo in philly burbs looking for younger guys for a lt.'

Now, I don't know what 'a lt' means (a loose time? a little tender-lovin'-care? a laser-tag tournament?) but what I do know is this: some 26 year old dude in Carpenter library is trying to meet 'younger guys.'

Not that I'm here to out anybody.

quote of the day

'"War is to men as marriage is to women." That's the only smart thing Jean-Pierre Vernant ever said. [The idea of looking at cultures from the perspective of both genders] made him immortal. But he said a lot of stupid things, too.

--R. Hamilton, 9/8/04

the runner-up:

[After translating a sentence reading, 'The sun brings the beginning of life to men.'] 'Now, that sounds like philosophy. Some people say it's water. Others say it's earth. They're smart, because that's what Hesiod says.'

--R. Hamilton, 9/8/04

more old news

rogue classicism has a nice feature detailing what events of note happened on this day in the ancient world. today, september 7, is day 3 of the ludi Romani--the site links here for an explanation of the games. here it is:

The Ludi Romani

The Ludi Romani (The Roman Games), also known as the Ludi Magni (The Great Games) was arguably the major religious festival of the Romans, although it would appear that, as time went on, the religious elements were largely overshadowed by the various competitions. These games were originally held on September 13, in honour of the Romans' patron god Jupiter Optimus Maximus, whose temple was dedicated on the 13th in 509 or 507 B.C. (depending on which source you believe). Over time, the festival was expanded up to the fifth of the month and down to the ninteenth, making for over a half-a-month's worth of festivities. After Julius Caesar's assassination, another day was added (September 4) as one of the many honours decreed to him. For most of the period of the Republic, the Ludi Romani were the responsibility of the curule aediles; later Augustus would transfer their organization to the praetor.

The Opening Procession

We are fortunate that Dionysius of Halicarnassus decided to use the Ludi Romani as an exemplum to demonstrate that the Romans weren't actually barbarians, but put on festivals 'just like the Greeks'. As part of this demonstration, he describes in great detail the opening procession (7.72 ff):


*The consuls (and other magistrates) led the procession from the Capitol down through the Forum to the Circus Maximus
*They were followed by young men (perhaps the collegia of iuvenes?), both on foot and on horseback
*Then came those who were presumably going to take part in the chariot races, with some driving teams of four horses, others driving teams of two, and singles
*They were followed by those who were to take part in the athletic competitions; in the procession they wore only a loin cloth
*Next came groups of dancers, made up both of men and boys. They wore red tunics and bronze belts, a bronze crested helmet, and a sword. They also carried a spear(This is all vaguely reminiscent of the Salii; is there a connection?). They were accompanied by assorted musicians
*They were followed by men dressed as hairy satyrs and Silenoi who impersonated (with obvious rustic humour) the flashy military dancers who preceded them (the Romans had a penchant for mixing the bawdy/obscene with the solemn). They too were accompanied by assorted musicians.
*At this point the procession takes on a more religious tone, with men carrying incense and gold and silver vessels
*Penultimately there came images of the gods, which were carried on fercula (something like a stretcher) on the shoulders of other men. The gods included the 12 Olympians as well as a mix of native Italic and imported divinities (e.g. Saturn, Ops, Themis, The Fates, Mnemosyne, the Muses, the Graces. etc.)
*Finally there came the sacrificial animals.

The Sacrificial Ritual

Dionysius also relates the sacrificial ritual. The consuls presided over the ritual and the attendant priests would ritually wash their hands, then purify the oxen with clean water. The priests also sprinkled the oxen with mola salsa, which was a sort of loose (possibly very loose) cake made from spelt which had been gathered and roasted by the Vestal Virgins (this was a standard feature of most sacrifices at Rome). Attendants were then ordered to carry out the sacrifice, which was done by holding knives beneath the throats of the animals, then thumping them on the temple, which caused them to fall on the knives and be slain [note in passing: this strikes me as having the same impetus as throwing criminals from the Tarpeian rock; in effect, the victim kills themself, thus absolving the sacrificer/executioner from blood guilt]. The animals were then butchered and a piece from the 'inward parts' and from each limb was 'seasoned' with mola salsa and carried in special baskets by the priests to the altar, where it was put on fire and wine poured over them while it was burning. This, of course, was the gods' share, the smoke from which provided them with their means of survival (and maintained the pax deorum). The remainder was cut up and presumably distributed amongst the participants present.

The Ludi Scaenici

From at least 240 B.C./B.C.E. on, ludi scaenici (theatrical competitions) were an integral part of the Ludi Romani. In that year, Livius Andronicus was commissioned by the aediles to translate scenes from Greek comedy and tragedy into different metres and perform them. In the following years, it would appear that a 'Greek style' theatrical competition evolved; the participation of actors as well as folks dressed as satyrs might suggest that some of the dramas might have been more ribald than a Greek like Dionysius of Halicarnassus would have liked. By the time we reach the empire, the performances appear to have been largely confined to mime and especially pantomime (the latter being somewhat akin to a modern ballet, with the participants generally having notorious, Nureyev/Isadora Duncan-like reputations).

The Ludi Circenses

Despite the stereotypical image of Rome's national sport being feeding assorted malcontents to the lions, the only sport which really could lay claim to being 'the national sport' was chariot racing. Given that the procession of the Ludi Romani went to the Circus Maximus, with its capacity of possibly 150,000, it's not surprising that ludi circenses, a.k.a. chariot racing, formed a large part of the festivities. Outside of the thrill of the races themselves the Circus Maximus was also one of the very few venues where seating was not segregated according to sex, and if we believe the poet Ovid, it was a great place to meet and rub shoulders (literally) with future spouses and persons one intended to have a less permanent relationship with.

The other attraction with chariot-racing was gambling. Although the magistrates would have paid for horses, chariots, and drivers for the Ludi Romani, the horses and drivers were still identified by their 'stables' (the Blues, the Greens, the Reds, the Whites -- the latter two possibly being a late Republic development) and the fans were pathologically loyal to their favourite stable (to the extent that they might even bury lead 'curse tablets' to ensure their favourite would win).

Dionysius relates that the first race was a sort of mixed thing, with a race between chariots with differing numbers of horses and equipment. We also hear of races in which there were two people in the chariot, and upon crossing the finishing line, one would jump out and run another lap. There were probably numerous other variations as magistrates tried to make their particular games memorable.

Between races (the number on the 'card' seems to vary), there were often other amusements: jugglers, acrobats, etc. the sort of thing we associate with 'circuses' like Cirque de Soleil). The races at the Ludi Romani seem to have been followed by assorted athletic events, such as boxing, wrestling, and footracing. It also seems likely that the so-called Lusus Troiae, a sort of precision equestrian drill put on by the iuvenes (generally the sons of the rich and famous) was part of these festivities. This ancient version of the "Musical Ride" (a little Canadian content there) supposedly had Etruscan origins and was 'revived' by Augustus.

September 13

As mentioned previously, the festival was originally held on September 13 to commemorate the dedication of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus (509 or 507 B.C.). As might be expected, even though the festival expanded in length in both directions, this was the 'high point' of the whole thing and by the late Republic, there were a number of feasts (epuli) to honour Jupiter and/or assorted divinities closely associated with him (they are somewhat confusing). The earliest such epulum, which possibly dates from 509 B.C., if not earlier, seems to be the epulum Iovi which only involved senatorial types. Later we hear of an epulum Iovi, Iunoni, Minervae (i.e. the Capitoline triad) and one in honour of Minerva alone. By the turn of the second century A.D., however, these (and other) epulones required major organization (presumably because more people were allowed to take part in some of them) and so in 196 B.C. we hear of a college of three epulones -- three special magistrates -- whose sole task was to organize such banquets. By the end of the Republic,ten such magistrates were needed.

Returning to the epulum Iovis, it was, as mentioned, confined to senatorial types. It began with a sacrifice, and for the feast that followed, images of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva were set on a couch, dressed up as if they were actually participating in the feast (Jupiter reclined on a couch; Juno and Minerva sat on 'chairs', as proper Roman matrons would have done).

Down to the third century or so, we hear of another ritual being associated with this day (and probably incorporated into the festival). It was on this day when the praetor maximus (later, one of the consuls) would drive a nail into the wall of the temple of Jupiter. Supposedly this was originally done to avert plague, but it evolved into an important annual ritual -- so important that, if there wasn't a magistrate of sufficient rank to perform the ceremony a 'dictator for the hammering of the nail" might be appointed for the task. Later historians would claim to be able to count the nails and so decide when the Republic began.

The Probatio Equitum

In calendars from the Imperial period we read that on September 14, there was an 'inspection of the cavalry'. During the time of the Republic, this regularly had occurred on July 15; it had fallen into desuetude by the time of Sulla and was revived under Augustus. If the probatio equitum on September 14 was anything like the Republican version, the equites (i.e. those who were granted a state-supplied horse) would parade from the Temple of Mars (outside the walls), pass through various parts of the city, the Forum, past the Temple of Castor and Pollux, and possibly finishing at the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. They would pause at the Temple of Castor and Pollus and be formally approved by the censors (in the Republic) or the emperor (in the empire). The horsemen wore their 'dress uniforms', as if coming home victorious from battle: wearing olive branches on their heads and purple robes with scarlet stripes (the trabea. They'd also wear whatever 'medals' they had won in battle. During the empire such parades had political overtones, insofar as this was one venue where their official status as an eques was confirmed in a very public way.

on this day in history

according to rogue classicism, on september 6, 1956, michael ventris, decipherer of the mycenaean language linear B, died, having driven his car at high speed into a parked truck. although trained in architecture, not philology, he made one of the most important and stunning discoveries in the history of the discipline. you can read a little bit about him here.
R.I.P.

Another change

I've made the poll more prominent and expect some votes ASAP.

With official business out of the way, I'd like simply to say that reading Late Antique Latin poetry is hell. The syntax stretches the limits of my Latin (or as Eric corrected me the other day, 'it stretches the limits of Latin') and the changes in meter in Paulinus 10 are beginning to give me a nervous tick. He moves from elegiac couplets to Iambic strophes, then alters the character of iambic lines in ways unfamiliar to me so that I wonder if I'm even scanning it correctly, and then I see he picks up with the hexameter about a hundred lines in. It's a good thing he announces early what his meters will be, and really, that's the most impressive part of the poem:

Such things, however, must be given their own place, and driven by the weightier sound of the avenging heroic (viz. hexameter). In the meantime the lighter iambic (iambic strophe) runs ahead for a short while bearing back borrowed words by a different foot. Now elegiac (couplets) wish you well, and the greeting given, as they've made the start and step for the other (metres), they're silent.

Packed in those few lines is battle imagery, and a sort of program of the events to come. I greet you in elegiacs, answer you in iambics, and fight you in epic. I just wish it was comprehensible.

Blogography

Jason remarked recently that he'd visited a blog which listed other blogs in a strict taxonomy: law blogs, literature blogs, film blogs, anthropology blogs, et al. And yet in the end they all wrote about politics.

We haven't had that problem here at the Campus, but without that political crutch posting has been spotty. So I'm challenging myself now (and hope others will follow suit, though Eric is to be commended for his excellent contributions) first to post more often, but more importantly to write meaningful posts within this blog's implied scope.

Struggling through the Epistles of Ausonius and Paulinus alone should afford enough material.

Changes at the Campus

Scroll down to see a new poll (on the left side of your screen, just past the other blogs), through which you just may be able to help me decide on a subject for my thesis.

One other piece of news: I've set up an account with SiteMeter, so I now I'll know exactly how few readers we have!

ancient and modern

did you know that '[e]very week in the London Spectator, Peter Jones compares something that has happened in the week's news with the way things were done in the ancient world'? well, he does, and you can find them here (thanks to classics in contemporary culture for the link).

i'll see your philology, and raise you a philosophy

as dennis will remember, several days ago i lamented to him regarding the following comment from allan bloom's essay 'the study of texts', which can be found in his book giants and dwarfs:

Almost all modern scholarship, beginning with classical philology, started from the assumption that its fundamental ideas were superior to those of the authors it studied and placed these authors in a context alien to them. Even such as idealist and realist, liberal and conservative are profoundly misleading although they seem to us as natural as night and day.

i was chagrined by the assertion that classical philologists, from the very inception of the discipline, saw themselves as prima facie superior to the ancients, for that, it seems, would make those scholars rather uncharitable and condescending toward their predecessors. while i am still not ready to accept this diagnosis in any holistic sense (though i am trying to keep my eyes much more open for evidence thereof), i cannot think it was mere coincidence that, almost immediately after reading bloom's words, i came across this statement in m.i. finley's book the ancient greeks (which, by clicking on the link, you may purchase for as little as $0.47) in his discussion on the dark age and the homeric poems:

Nothing can make up for the nonexistence of contemporary Greek writing, whether narrative or religious or administrative. And so we, like the Greeks, must fall back on the Iliad and the Odyssey. Here again, surprising as it may seem, we know far more than the Greeks, for not only has modern philology made its contribution....

i realize the parallel to bloom's words is not necessarily a close one --there is no use here of labels for the ancients such as 'liberal', 'conservative', or anything else, and he goes on in the same paragraph to rehabilitate the poems as more than 'merely poetic fiction'. but in spirit, perhaps there is a similarity in finley's statement to the very thing which bloom criticizes, viz., that it seems strange to say that we are more knowledgeable about the greeks' own poetry than the greeks were themselves.

chalk one up for brussels

this, via drudge, about who won the olympics, is rather interesting given our conversation last night while playing cards.

GSEMination

I'm just wondering if anyone can walk me through the implications of natality.

five man acoustical jam

dennis: per our conversation earlier today, i thought i would pass along that on the way home today, due to commercials on other stations, i flipped to 93.3, and do you know what came on shortly thereafter? that's right--tesla's version of 'signs'. your positions becomes an increasingly impenetrable citadel moment by moment...

a right angola is exactly 90 degrees

in honor of the sincere interst which dennis expressed to me yesterday regarding the US-angola basketball showdown, i decided to look up angola in the dictionary of cultural literacy. though it is not related to the typical themes of the CAMPVS, i will share it anyway. here's what it says:

'Republic in southwestern Africa on the Atlantic coast, bordered to the north and northeast by Zaire, to the east by Zambia, and to the south by Namibia. Its capital and largest city is Luanda.

'After achieving independence from Portugal in 1976, Angola was the scene of a civil war between its Marxist government, supported by the Soviet Union and Cuban troops, and a rebel organization known as UNITA, which was aided by the United States and South Africa. In 1988 the United States engineered a settlement that led to the withdrwawal of Cuban troops and to South African acceptance of black majority rule in neighboring Namibia.'

while prowling my way around the dictionary, i found myself in the 'business and economics' section. while there, i read the following definition of 'mixed economy':

'An economy that combines elements of capitalism and socialism, mixing some individual ownership and regulation. Some capitalist countries--for example, Great Britain, which has free markets but extensive governmental presence in the economy as an owner of industries and preserver of social services--have mixed economies.'

the second sentence strikes me as (oxy)moronic, since the idea of free markets is incompatible with 'extenisive governmental presence in the economy'. so i looked up their definition of 'free market':

'The production and exchange of goods and services without interference from the government or from monopolies.'

hmmm. and what do we find under 'monopoly'?

'The exclusive control by one company of a service or product.'

and if we, in our most reaganite fashion, conceive of government as a corportation or business, what do we have except a monopoly when the government is 'an owner of industries'? and since monopolies are antithetical to free markets, how can the idea of a 'mixed economy' be anything but silly doublespeak?

thus ends, for the moment, my foray into 'the dictionary of cultural literacy'.

this ain't no warrior princess

you will all enjoy merriam-webster's word-of-the-day from august 14 because of its greek roots, AND because of the 'did you know?' section which discusses new latin. thus, i present it to you:

xenophobia \zen-uh-FOH-bee-uh\ noun

: fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign

Example sentence:
I always thought it was odd that Gene, whose xenophobia precluded travel beyond the state border, chose to become a travel agent.

Did you know?
If you look back to the ancient Greek terms that underlie the word "xenophobia," you'll discover that xenophobic individuals are literally "stranger fearing." "Xenophobia," that elegant-sounding name for an aversion to persons unfamiliar, ultimately derives from two Greek terms: "xenos," which can be translated as either "stranger" or "guest," and "phobos," which means either "fear" or "flight." "Phobos" is the ultimate source of all English "-phobia" terms, but many of those were actually coined in English or New Latin using the combining form "-phobia" (which traces back to "phobos"). "Xenophobia" itself came to us by way of New Latin and first appeared in print in English in 1903.

Some thoughts on modern linguistics

There is nothing more distracting in modern academic prose than the overuse of quotes, or what the Brits call inverted commas.

I'll demonstrate:

There is nothing more 'distracting' in modern 'academic' prose than the 'overuse' of quotes, or what the 'Brits' call 'inverted commas.'

John Lyons's Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics abounds with inverted commas as in this sentence:

But in both Greek and Latin there are 'exceptions' to the 'sound laws.'

More often than not the author's motivation is clear, and he deserves the wrath of Dr. Fowler:

superiority. Much misplaced ingenuity in finding forms of apology is shown by writers with a sense of their own superiority who wish to safeguard their dignity and yet be vivacious, to combine comfort with elegance, to touch pitch and not be defiled. Among them are: To use an expressive colloquialism—in the vernacular phrase—if the word may be permitted—so to speak—in homely phrase—not to put too fine a point upon it—if the word be not too vulgar—as they say—to call a spade a spade—not to mince matters—in the jargon of today—or the use of depreciatory inverted commas. Such writers should make up their minds whether their reputation or their style is such as to allow of their dismounting from the high horse now and again without compromising themselves.

Lyons, like so many other academics, is too busy being superior by avoiding language that might be perceived as authoritative that his book ends up a bland soup of non-committal nonsense in which the only accepted terminology is that of contemporary theory. This has something to do with the fact that most academics today view the world as a series of binary oppositions and choose the novelty of opposing tradition in some hyper-extended effort to challenge daddy's authority. Along with this there is often necessary the fallacy of ascribing to one's opponent positions he has never taken. The shadowy tradition that modern academics are always railing against is guilty most often of intellectual hubris and the sin of certainty, yet under the dimmest light it often becomes clear that our forebears had better command of their language than modern scholars who trump up false ambiguity as a weapon.

Philologists of the past published what they termed laws (e.g. Grassmann's Law, or Rask's, which is improperly called Grimm's Law), and Lyons faults them for the presumption of truth or certainty because they themselves didn't qualify law by inverted commas. Perhaps someone should buy Lyons and his friends a dictionary. A law is not a universal and eternal truth discovered by man, but a technical formulation imposed or a general principal agreed upon by men, and is always open to modification, retraction, and replacement. That is the definition of the term, that's what it meant to the men who published laws, and that's what it will always mean in their texts even if the popular sense of the term has shifted today. (It seems to me that the inability of modern academics to understand texts written in the past few centuries makes a case for the corruption of language. But I digress.)

Lyons writes as though his predecessors actually believed in laws as active forces working in the universe rather than as models serving to illuminate phenomena. Positivists and 19th century philologists knew that. It's time to strip away from relativists the monopoly they would claim for common sense.

This is why theorists (I shouldn't call them critics -- Housman would turn in his grave) are so fond of deflated terms like truth value and senseless plurals like knowledges (a necessary consequence of the faith of the church of relativism). For them, there is no truth, and all claims to knowledge are equally valid. What matters, then, is tolerance of the 'truth value' and 'knowledges' of others while being sure not to offend. This means qualifying one's own 'truth value' and 'knowledges' by constant appeals to relativism (and yes, those are inverted commas of superiority).

Lyons even has a hard time conceding that the Latin language has a case system, putting case in inverted commas as if to say that the bourgeois Western system of classifying language is an artificial construct that is hardly representative of language as a living thing (though I suppose it will have to do), and moreover it is hardly the only or the best system of classification. Doubtless the persons (or is it peoples?) of Papua New Guinea developed a more noble and equitable system, stamped out by Anglo-Saxon oppressors.

When Lyons asserts that speech does in fact precede writing he pretends that this is a revelation. But when he says that writing is an attempt to represent speech he is showinig his prejudice and lack of understanding. Writing is not an attempt to represent speech any more than speech is an attempt to emulate writing. Writing and speech are two modes of communication, one durable the other ephemeral (excepting sound recording, which requires advanced technology and has little to do with speech as such). Writing and speech take on widely different characteristics in literate culture, and writing admits of countless specialized uses restrictive of speech. It also requires different modes of communicating the same non-lexical information (i.e. emphasis, emotional interest, tone of voice, grammatical relations, etc.). Writing and speech are different things, and language may actually be better understood through traditional writing than through speech because the lack of performative cues and clues requires the writer to use the native grammar to its fullest capacity.

This prejudice in favor of speech becomes clear when we consider sign language, which has more in common with writing than speech, and actually forms the basis for the early pictograms of many written languages. The hearing-impaired may have limited to no speech capacity yet be fully able to process and create language. Further, the primacy of sound in the study of language ignores high-level reading, or what may be truly termed silent reading, in which there is no subvocalization and no mental reproduction of the sounds represented in speech. It is possible to read and to write rapidly without the crutch of the phonetic middleman, just as one easily understands speech without visualizing the written word. The mental reproduction of sound often slows our reading and muddles our comprehension.

The insistance on sound as central to an understanding of language is at the very least immature. Sound factors so heavily in language because of its adaptability and facility, but it has little to do with the fundamental mental processes that constitute language. A community of deaf-mute individuals would be no less capable of language than anyone else, though the mode of communication would of necessity be very different.

leave your PC shoes at the door!

here is merriam-webster's word-of-the-day from august 17, which you will all find interesting, especially the etymological bit:

tartar \TAR-ter\ noun

1 capitalized : a native or inhabitant of a vast historical region in Asia and Eastern Europe roughly extending from the Sea of Japan to the Dnieper
*2 often capitalized : a person of irritable or violent temper
3 : one that proves to be unexpectedly formidable

Example sentence:
On the basketball court, Nate was a Tartar whose undisciplined behavior often got him in trouble with the referee.

Did you know?
Originally, their name was "Tatar," not "Tartar." Since at least the 1200s, the Tatar people have lived in Asia and Eastern Europe, and they were among the fiercest fighters of the Golden Horde of the Mongols. In the 13th century, they rode with Genghis Khan and became the terror of their day. Their name, "Tatar," is believed to come from Persian or a Turkic language, but in Europe it was associated with "Tartarus," the Latin name for the part of Hell reserved for the punishment of the wicked. Because of that association, English speakers began calling the Tatar people "Tartars." Over time, "tartar" came to be used for anyone considered as ferocious or violent as the Tartar warriors who had once ransacked the ancient world.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Captian Kook is aboard!

And I couldn't be more excited.

I'm so excited that I'll actually post today. And here it is ...

I was reading Cicero's First Catilinarian just now and I came across a line that I thought rocked:

"ubinam gentium sumus? in qua urbe uiuimus? quam rem publicam habemus?"

It reminded me of a line in Churchill's speech following Pearl Harbor:

"What kind of a people do they think we are?"

The story goes that people rose to their feet and applauded for five minute. Now that's what I call oratory.

100,000 chomskyites can't be wrong (or can they?)

here is an interesting factoid from steven pinker's 'the language instinct' (1994):

'Chomsky is currently among the ten most-cited writers in all of the humanities (beating out Hegel and Cicero and trailing only Marx, Lenin, Shakespeare, the Bible, Aristotle, Plato, and Freud) and the only living member of the top ten.'

interesting that two commies are among the ten most-cited people EVER by humanities professors.

somone tell me if their experience has been otherwise--but in scholarship on classics, i haven't come across too many references to chomsky. i've found i'm much more likely to happen upon foucault and derrida as the trendiest of all gurus to which one might nod (or, in many cases, offer obeisance).

a bit curious, i do say

i intend to have a post up here soon. but for the time being, i would just like to say that i question the timing of dennis's most recent post regarding gil prose's 'confessions'. i'm not sure WHY i question it, exactly, but, as i've been learning recently, that is of no great moment.

One more reason to develop an opium habit.

The following is an excerpt of Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and it makes me want to drop out of graduate school:

My father died when I was about seven years old, and left me to the care of four guardians. I was sent to various schools, great and small; and was very early distinguished for my classical attainments, especially for my knowledge of Greek. At thirteen I wrote Greek with ease; and at fifteen my command of that language was so great, that I not only composed Greek verses in lyric metres, but would converse in Greek fluently, and without embarrassment -- an accomplishment which I have not since met with in any scholar of my times, and which, in my case, was owing to the practice of daily reading off the newspapers into the best Greek I could furnish extempore; for the necessity of ransacking my memory and invention for all sorts and combinations of periphrastic expressions, as equivalents for modern ideas, images, relations of things, etc., gave me a compass of diction which would never have been called out by a dull translation of moral essays, etc. "That boy," said one of my masters, pointing the attention of a stranger to me, "that boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could address an English one." He who honoured me with this eulogy was a scholar, "and a ripe and good one," and, of all my tutors, was the only one whom I loved or reverenced. Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, to this worthy man's great indignation), I was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead, who was in a perpetual panic lest I should expose his ignorance; and, finally, to that of a respectable scholar, at the head of a great school on an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed to his situation by -- College, Oxford; and was a sound, well-built scholar, but (like most men whom I have known from that college) coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. A miserable contrast he presented, in my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of my favourite master; and, besides, he could not disguise from my hourly notice the poverty and meagreness of his understanding. It is a bad thing for a boy to bet and know himself, far beyond his tutors, whether in knowledge or in power of mind. This was the case, so far as regarded knowledge at least, not with myself oniy; for the two boys who jointly with myself composed the first form were better Grecians than the head-master, though not more elegant scholars, nor at all more accustomed to sacrifice to the graces. When I first entered, I remember that we read Sophocles; and it was a constant matter of triumph to us, the learned triumvirate of the first form, to see our "Archididascalus" (as he loved to be called) conning our lesson before we went up, and laying a regular train, with lexicon and grammar, for blowing up and blasting (as it were) any difficulties he found in the choruses; whilst we never condescended to open our books, until the moment of going up, and were generally employed in writing epigrams upon his wig, or some such important matter.

when was the last time someone wrote saturnian verse for YOU?

i'd like to thank dennis for the grand poetic tribue composed upon my return. it fills my sails with wind.

but thankfully not with hot air. i've got enough of that on my own.

by the way, i'm trying to get the dave going again, so if any of our loyal readers are interested, feel free not to think twice, it's alright--just go there.

i'm hoping that dennis will indulge some more of his metrical fantasy here soon.

until then...

Saturnine Fever

The Campvs was graced today by Eric's presence as he has finally returned from Italy, so in his honor I shall now compose a Saturnian verse ... in English.

Eric was sorely missed / by the folks at the Campvs.
And now that he's back once more, / we'll surely rejoice.

Okay ... that wasn't very good. And someone else might read it with different stress accents.

I'm going to rad a bunch of articles on Saturnian meter and I'll get back to you.