The Survival of Classical Texts (2)

Previously, we noted the importance of Carolingian strongholds in the revival of the copying of ancient texts. But what of England’s part? Reynolds observes that, due to wars and invasions, England had lost most of its collection of literature even as such collections were starting to grow on the Continent.. When England began to rebuild her libraries in the 10th century, it is a sign of the extent of the Continental revival that connoisseurs were aided by texts that had migrated across the water, probably as a result of the influx of Europeans caused by the invasions :

'But crossing the English Channel is always something of a bore, and the gradual restocking of English libraries is one indication of the vigour and success with which classical learning was able to expand its orbit’ (xxxi-xxxii).

Evidence indicates that much more ancient poetry than prose was acquired at this time. Moreover, classical learning continued to pick up steam and rapidly expanded in the century following the Norman Conquest (xxxiv).

As one moves into the 11th century, German and Italian contributions overshadow those of France (xxxii). This trend is especially noteworthy at the Italian monastery of Montecassino:

‘The most remarkable phenomenon is of course the copying at Montecassino within the course of a few decades [of the eleventh century] of a whole clutch of hitherto totally unknown texts’ (xxxiii).

The trend of the revival (though one must take some ups and downs into account) continued upward, especially as another sort of renaissance began in the 12th century. During this time, one may observe a great increase in the amount of books circulating (xxxv). France now again moves (probably) into a position of dominance, ‘though there is strenuous competition from the monasteries of Bavaria and Austria....The Cistercians were a vigorous order and their scriptoria were particularly busy’ (xxxv). The increased volume, however, brought problems of its own: textual corruption. Reynolds points out that

‘[e]ditors do not necessarily look upon the manuscripts of the later Middle Ages with any great enthusiasm. In the case of some authors they will have had a long copying tradition behind them, with its inevitable accumulation and compounding of error and conjecture, and there is now a marked propensity towards arbitrary alteration’ (xxxv).

And, remembering the Norman Conquest, one must not forget the increased activity in England. Reynolds illustrates this point by referring to ‘the breadth of reading of such a writer as William of Malmesbury, who was totally dependent on the books which he could obtain in England’ (xxxvi).

Naturally, such revivals gave birth to an increase in literacy, previously the province, for the most part, of clergy and the powerful (xxxvii). Reynolds states that

‘[t]he putting into circulation of newly discovered works of Latin literature could have a wider impact on taste and culture now that books were coming withing the reach of a reading public’ (xxxvii).

Finally, there are a couple of more things worth remarking upon in the run-up to the capital-r Renaissance. The first is the development of the convenient florilegium, which made a greater amount of Latin literature available in circulation; this occurred at the same time as Latin translations from Greek and Arabic gave access to Aristotelian philosophy and science (xxxvii-xxxviii).

Secondly, the importance of the development of printing cannot be overstated:

‘Although the change was gradual–some of our late manuscripts are copies of printed editions–most Latin authors were available in print by the end of the fifteenth century’ (xlii-xliii).

Public Finance in 4th century Athens

We've received a request from a reader named George in the UK who is looking for some help with bibliography in the subject above. He would appreciate any help, and I'll direct him to any comments left here.

I can't say that I know a lot (or anything) about the subject, but I imagine a good place to start would be Robin Osborne & Simon Hornblower's Ritual, Finance, Politics: Athenian Democratic Accounts (OUP 1994).

I've recently run across a few articles and things that discuss public finance in 3rd century Delphi under the Aetolian league, and such things seem very specialized. I'd recommend doing some creative searches with L'Année philologique, which your university or (hopefully) one nearby will allow you to access. Off the top of my head I'd guess that BCH (Bulletin de correspondance hellénique) will end up being a good source for inscriptional evidence.

Good luck!

Numismatics again.

Guess what? This post isn't about coins. It's about someone who sells coins spamming our site with ads. I wanted you to know that I'll be deleting all of your disingenuous comments and that they will lead no one to your site. It's really pathetic that you'd take the time to post so many comments with security features in place.

I'll also be enabling comment moderation and promise to stay on top of it so that comments are not delayed.

Delayed Resolution for the New Year

I resolve to read the other classics blogs with more regularity, starting with David Meadows's rogueclassicism.

And if that means I keep myself from posting what's already been discussed elsewhere, maybe I'll be forced to try harder.

Gow's Housman

Before Saranike and I head out to do a little book hunting I thought I'd recommend A.S.F. Gow's A.E. Housman: a sketch together with a list of his writing and indexes to his classical papers.

Why that long and odd subtitle? Because one condition of Housman's will was that no one ever collect his published papers into a single volume. He evidently didn't want his early work to stand beside what he considered his life's achievments (Manilius, for one).

Gow's sketch is brief (57 pages with the remainder taken by the bibliography and indexes), charming, and allows Housman to speak humbly about himself often. That would appear to some to be a paradox of his character, but it is perfectly reasonable that someone so well-known for his attacks on the intellectual failings and dishonesty of others would appraise himself as a pedant who counted only as one fourth a Bentley or roughly a Porson.

The harshest critic of other was his own harshest critic.

Next on my list is, appropriately, C.O. Brink's English Classical Scholarship: historical reflections on Bentley, Porson, and Housman. Stay tuned.

Our Retired Explorer (Dines With Michel Foucault In Paris, 1961)

Those with a bent toward 'theory' or, alternatively, toward 'interrogating its discourse' (to borrow a few terms) should check out the song by the Weakerthans mentioned in the subject line. Here are the lyrics:

Just one more drink and then I should be on my way home
I'm not enterely sure what your talking about
I've had a really nice time but my dogs need to be fed
I must say that in the right light you look like Shackleton
Comment allez-vous ce soir? Je suis comme ci comme ça
Yes, a penguin taught me French back in Antarctica
Oh, I could show you the way shadows colonize snow
Ice breaking up on the bay off the Lassiter coast
Light failing over the pole as every longitude leads
up to your frost bitten feet oh, you're very sweet
thank you for the flowers and the book by Derrida
But I must be getting back to dear Antarctica
Say, do you have a ship and a dozen able men
That maybe you could lend me?

Oh Antarctica
Oh Antarctica
Oh Antarctica
Oh Antarctica

The lyrics alone without the poppy music don't really do it justice, and maybe others won't find it as amusing as I do, but it does make me chuckle to think of a frost-bitten, earthy, hardened old explorer chatting with Foucault about Derrida and icebergs until he has to go home to let his dogs out.

Typhoid Melanippe?

One of our field agents who goes by the name 'the Hawk' tipped us off to this Scientific American story about DNA used to identify the plague at Athens during the Peloponnesian War as Typhoid Fever:

More than 2,000 years ago, a plague gripped the Greek city of Athens. Ultimately, as much as a third of the population succumbed and the devastation, which helped Sparta gain the upper hand in the nearly 30-year-long war between the city-states. That much Thucydides--an ancient historian, general in the war and plague victim who recovered--conveys in his History of the Peloponnesian War. But he did not leave a precise enough description to decide definitively whether the disease was bubonic plague, smallpox or a host of other ailments. Now DNA collected from teeth in an ancient burial pit points to typhoid fever.

Typhus has been identified in the past as a top contender, as it has been on Indiana's Asclepion page, dedicated to the study of ancient medicine. Be on the look out for new articles supporting or refuting the findings in your favorite journals. And who knows ... maybe today we'll even see it in blogs.

The Survival of Classical Texts

In the introduction to Texts and Transmission, L.D. Reynolds helpfully illustrates the contraction and expansion of classical texts from antiquity through the Dark Ages and into the Middle Ages with the figure of the hourglass, in which the slender middle represents the almost total disappearance of classical culture from the intellectual scene during the period running from roughly 550-750 A.D. The lack of activity with respect to texts of Vergil illustrates this point. Reynolds notes that

‘[o]f the 16 manuscripts of Rome’s national poet to have survived from late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, 6 are attributed to the fourth century, 5 to the fifth, 3 to c.500; then we have nothing until the late eighth century’ (xvi).

Antique and Late Antique laborers were responsible for other tasks, too, which would aid in the resurgence of classical learning in the wake of the Dark Ages, since their craftsmen developed the techniques widely used for book-making:

‘By the fifth century the roll had given way to the codex, a form of book which has never been superseded. Although the change of format had by now yielded to parchment, which was much more durable and not subject to the monopoly of the Middle East; it could be manufactured wherever there were cows and sheep and goats. The beautiful uncial script was firmly established, as was the first minuscule book-hand, half-uncial. All the arts essential to the making of books as the Middle Ages knew them were fully developed’ (xv).

For the Carolingian revival to be possible, of course, texts were needed. Reynolds conjectures that Italy was probably most responsible for the influx of texts in the north. As he states,

‘If we turn to Italy, the results are much more positive; the movement of books northwards over the Alps can be amply documented. It began long before the Carolingian period, as books were attracted to the powerful monastic foundations of northern Europe....When we come to the Carolingian period and manuscript traditions begin to blossom forth in profusion, the chances are that many of their archetypes were books imported from Italy. This is of course often impossible to prove; but it is not unreasonable to assume that many of the texts had indeed travelled by the prevailing wind’ (xxi-xxii)

The most important city for this could well have been Ravenna, since it had remained a political and cultural power into the sixth century (xxiii).

The Caronlingian revival, the first such major revival of interest in classical literature to occur in the Middle Ages, lasted for approximately 100 years, spanning the ninth century. Its major achievement was one of consolidation, and the court and monasteries played the major role (xxv):

‘The fundamental function of the Carolingian revival in the transmission of our texts was to gather in what could be found of the literature and learning of the past and generate from it the new medieval traditions which would carry the classics through the centuries’ (xxiv)

By the end of the ninth century, in fact, most of what we now possess of classical literature 'had...been copied and was enjoying some degree of circulation, however limited, localized, or precarious it may in some cases have been’ (xxvii-xxviii).

An important factor in the success of the promulgation of these texts was the development of a clear and readable script, the Carolingian minuscule. Indeed, regions of the Empire that did not use this script were not nearly as influential as those that did:

‘The comparative illegibility of ‘national’ hands might help to account for the relatively modest contribution of Ireland and Spain and the slowness with which texts written in Beneventan percolated from their base in the south of Italy...’ (xxviii).

In the years following the Carolingian reflorescence, copying activity likely began to be concentrated in the south and west. Reynolds remarks that

‘Two-thirds of the ninth-century manuscripts mentioned in this book were written in what we now know as France....[A]mid all this flux and reflux it is perhaps not too fanciful to sense a general drift towards the south and west, as the deposits of texts built up at the Carolingian court and in the abbeys of western Germany and north-eastern France were carried to other regions, where, sooner or later, they would help to stimulate fresh revivals of classical learning’ (xxix).

On Theoretical Jargon

'Modern American theorists are products of the U.S. educational system: rarely do they master a foreign language. Perhaps that is why they have invented their own.'

--Karl Galinsky, in 'Introduction: The Current State of the Interpretation of Roman Poetry and the Contemporary Critical Scene' (p. 24) (from The Interpretation of Roman Poetry: Empiricism or Hermeneutics?, K. Galinsky, ed.)

An Uncommon Word?

While I was reading Proba's Cento today, I came across the half-line

facies inmania cete,

which is from Aeneid 5.22. I had to look cete up--it's a neuter plural from the noun cetos (the 'e' is long) and is a direct transliteration of the Greek noun khtos (with 'h' representing eta--sorry, no Greek font), and means 'a sea-monster'. I only have Lewis' Elementary Latin Dictionary in front of me right now, and Vergil is the only classical author cited as having used this noun, which is where Proba got it from, as I mentioned above. Does anyone recall seeing this noun used elsewhere by classical or late antique authors?

Golden Latin Artistry

I decided recently to read through L.P. Wilkinson's book Golden Latin Artistry straight through to get an idea of the book as a whole and to re-introduce myself, as it were, to Latin verse and prose.

As it turned out, some aspects of the book were not even re-introductions for me, but introductions, and I especially include here the extensive and helpful discussions of prose rhythm. In this section, as in the others, Wilkinson demonstrates a remarkable knack for synthesizing ancient evidence from Aristotle, Cicero, and sundry grammarians, along with modern discussions representing a potpourri of languages and spanning the long range of scholarship from the 18th century to his own contemporary day.

The three parts of the book are: 'Sounds', subdivided into 'Pronunciation', 'Verbal Music', and 'Expressiveness'; 'Rhythms', subdivided into 'Verse Rhythm' and 'Prose Rhythm'; and 'Structure', subdivided into 'Periodic Prose' and 'Architectonics of Verse'. He closes with two appendices, 'Rival Theories to the Pulse-Accent Theory of Latin Dactylic Verse' and 'Some Modern Theories of Latin Prose Rhythm'.

The concerns of the book are largely formal, and often touch on topics which lend themselves to subjectivity. Throughout, however, Wilkinson displays an admirable level-headedness and restraint in presenting his views. His baseline standard with which to make judgments seems to be what he calls 'aesthetic principles'. Sometimes these principles could be better defined, but most of the time, I think, the reader has a fairly good idea of what he is referring to.

In addition to his survey of prose rhythm, probably most helpful was his discussion of the 'Pulse-Accent theory' of dactylic verse. Though I don't know much about this outside of what I read in this book, I found it rather convincing.

It is my observation that this book should be required reading for every student of Latin literature. The discussions are lucid, accessible, well-stocked with examples, and give a very solid introduction to the formal features one should look for when reading the Latin classics. His style is warm and engaging, and the broad scope of the book combined with its thorough discussion will continue to give Golden Latin Artistry a great deal of staying power. For these reasons, I must disagree with J.P. Elder, who states in his heartily endorsing review that Golden Latin Artistry is not an important book, but is a very good one. Because of its usefulness and clarity, GLA strikes me as indispensable both for Latin literary pedagogy and, more generally, for Latin literary appreciation.

I close with a passage from 'Appendix 1' on hexameter caesuras that demonstrates Wilkinson's enjoyable style:

Lucian Mueller opined that the 'strong' (2 1/2) caesura, as in

Bella per Emathios//plus quam civilia campos,

was preferred by the Romans because it came as nearly as possible in the middle of the line (yet the 2 3/4 caesure is still nearer, and was preferred by many of the Greeks; and 3, which would be exactly in the middle, is avoided by all); also because the first member (if dactylic) would, if repeated, make a pentameter, 'second only among the pure jewels that compose the crown of Greek metres'; for example,

Bella per Emathios bella per Emathios;

and thirdly, because the second resultant memeber was in itself a metrical line, the paroemiac, 'which shines with an elegance of its own'; for example,

plus quam civilia campos.

He might just as well have said that he did not know the reason.

Spit and polish

I got tired of Athena so the Campus has undergone a very slight renovation.

As far as genuine content to add to the site, well, there really should be some, shouldn't there? We can chalk our lack of posts up to diligence in the execution of our scholarly obligations, but those activities should spawn posts, not prevent them.

I used a Borders gift which I'd gotten for Christmas to order C.O. Brink's English Classical Scholarship. This appears to argue that 19th century German philologists were following a British tradition which grew out of the Renaissance, but that, after a period of stagnation, came home again in the work of A.E. Housman. I haven't read it yet, but I'll post about it when I do. In addition to my thesis and tutoring I've been reading a number of things in and outside of classics, including the Iliad in Greek, Bonfire of the Humanities, some novels by the late Saul Bellow, Maurois's biography of Disraeli, and lots of Mark Twain.

For my thesis I've been reading on everything from ancient medicine to the history of Byzantine scholarship.

So I'll try to have something substantive to contribute here soon.

Items of Interest

A couple of things of note from Ross Holloway's article in the most recent newsletter of the Classical Society of the American Academy in Rome:

[A]cross the remains of medieval and later Rome brought to light in the recent excavations in the Forum of Trajan, there is even more recent news, the discovery of an over-life-size marble head of the Emperor Constantine in the main sewer under the Forum. In making announcement of the find the mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, remarked that the sculpture was not in the sewer by chance but had been put there deliberately. Damnatio memoriae or even crimen maiestatis, if Constantine were alive when the head was decapitated from the statue it once adorned and flushed? Walter Veltroni goes for the second explanation, recalling Constantine's unhappy return to Rome in 326 when, according to Zozimus, he had to retreat from the city followed by hoots and cat calls. I'm with him (for more on the subject see Orizzonti IV, 2004). The sculpture could have had a pracical use in the sewer...as a heavy mop dragged through the sewer to assist in cleaning it, but this possibility begs the question of how an imperial image came to be relegated to the sewer in the first place.

[...]

But of all archaeological work in Rome filled with a sense of anticipation perhaps the most fascinating is the investigations being carried out at the basilica of S. Paolo Fuori le Mura by archaeologists from the Vatican Museums under the direction of Dr. Giorgio Filippi. Below the high altar of the basilica and the stone with the inscription "Paolo Apostolo Mart" this work has revealed an intact sarcophagus. Its cover has a small opening creating a cataract through which strips of cloth could have been lowered to touch the saintly remains within. It appears more than likely that the remains venerated as those of the Apostle in the fourth century A.D. will indeed be brought to light. The sarcophagus is not in the position that it would have occupied in the Constantinian basilica because the building was thoroughly remade after his time, but it has evidently occupied its current position since the time of Theodosius the Great.

Sandys's History of Classical Scholarship

 

LEFT: My brand spanking new copy. RIGHT: the library's old copy, which is yellowed and falling apart.

This is what I asked of my parents for Christmas this year: a facsimile edition of John Edwin Sandys's A History of Classical Scholarship. I opted for the facsimile because it's printed on better paper and is more durably bound. This set was done by Martino Publishing in partnership with Krown and Spellman, booksellers. Krown & Spellman sell it for $165 + $5 per book shipping USPS. The edition which Martino offers on their site, apparently not in connection with Krown & Spellman, is listed at $195.

The only weakness of the facsimile is the quality of the illustrations, mostly portraits of classical scholars. The differences from the original did not photograph well, but it's something like a very good photocopy: no gray tones, some loss of detail, but nothing to cry about. 

Here are some more comparisons:
 
 

 
 

Plato's Motto

A question was sent out to a Latin teacher's list about Plato's motto, which a sender's colleague in math wanted to put above his door. Michael Hendry of Curculio remembered the first word of the Greek and replied with the quote and the citation as given in the LSJ.

I was intrigued and did a little reading via TLG, responding with what follows, though without the Greek, as e-mail still tends to revert to 7-bit ASCII, even in the 21st century. (The translations are mine):

---

The scholiast on Aelius Aristides 125.14 (Dindorf, Vol. 3) says the following:

ἐπεγέγραπτο ἔμπροσθεν τῆς διατριβῆς τοῦ Πλάτωνος ὅτι ἀγεωμέτρητος μηδεὶς εἰσίτω· ἀντὶ τοῦ ἄνισος καὶ ἄδικος. ἡ γὰρ γεωμετρία τὴν ἰσότητα καὶ τὴν δικαιοσύνην τηρεῖ.

'In front of Plato's school had been inscribed, "Let noone enter un-geometried" rather than "unequal" or "unjust," for geometry maintains equality and justness.'

I assume geometry was among the lower mathematical pursuits required for the study of philosophy, and it seems plausible that Plato would have framed its usefullness in terms of qualities of the soul.

At any rate, Pseudo-Galen (post 2 A.D.?) quotes the phrase at the beginning of 'On the divisions of philosophy,' and makes geometry a preliminary to theology:

ὁ μὲν οὖν Πλάτων εἰς φυσιολογικὸν καὶ θεολογικὸν αὐτὸ διαιρεῖ· τὸ γὰρ μαθηματικὸν οὐκ ἠβούλετο εἶναι μέρος τῆς φιλοσοφίας, ἀλλὰ προγύμνασμά τι ὥσπερ ἡ γραμματικὴ καὶ ἡ ῥητορική· ὅθεν καὶ πρὸ τοῦ ἀκροατηρίου τοῦ οἰκείου ἐπέγραψεν ‘ἀγεωμέτρητος μηδεὶς εἰσίτω’. τοῦτο δὲ ὁ Πλάτων ἐπέγραφεν, ἐπειδὴ εἰς τὰ πολλὰ θεολογεῖ καὶ περὶ θεολογίαν καταγίνεται· συμβάλλεται δὲ εἰς εἴδησιν τῆς θεολογίας τὸ μαθηματικόν, οὗτινός ἐστιν ἡ γεωμετρία.

'Plato divided it (theoretical philosophy) into physiology and theology. In fact, he did not want mathematics to be a part of philosophy, but a sort of progymnasma like grammar and rhetoric. That's why, before his private lecture-room, he inscribed "Let no one enter un-geometried." He inscribed this since he discoursed on theology in all matters and dwelt on theology, and included mathematics, of which geometry is a part, into theology's forms of knowledge.'

---

I like the notion that it wasn't the school but rather Plato's personal lecture space, and that the teacher wants to hang it above the door to his own classroom.

As one of my old humanities professors used to say in his booming baritone, 'mathematics is gymnastics for the mind!'

A note on translation

I have the utmost respect for the work of A.S.F. Gow and A.F. Scholfield, but I always find myself feeling that their translation does a grave disservice to Nicander, especially for those who don't have the Greek or the time (or the inclination) to work through the Greek.

Here's just one example, and not the most egregious, of a style of translation that aims at 'meaning' (which is subjective) while ignoring the manner of expression. It's the introduction to Nicander's extensive catalogue of snakes, following the recipes for various repellents including incense and balms for the skin (Theriaca 115-120):

Εἰ δέ που ἐν δακέεσσιν ἀφαρμάκτῳ χροῒ κύρσῃς
ἄκμηνος σίτων, ὅτε δὴ κακὸν ἄνδρας ἰάπτει,
αἶψά κεν ἡμετέρῃσιν ἐρωήσειας ἐφετμαῖς.
τῶν ἤτοι θήλεια παλίγκοτος ἀντομένοισι
δάχματι, πλειοτέρη δὲ καὶ ὁλκαίην ἐπὶ σειρήν·
τοὔνεκα καὶ θανάτοιο θοώτερος ἵξεται αἶσα.

Gow-Scholfield:

But if you should chance to come upon biting creatures when your skin is unmedicated and you are fasting--that is the time when disaster strikes a man--you may readily save yourself by our precepts. It is the Female Snake that attacks with its bite those who encounter it; besides, it is thicker right down to the trailing tail, and for that reason the doom of death will come more swiftly.

But this is what it says:

But if by chance, with flesh unanointed, you meet with noxious beasts, having gone long without food (that's when evil harms men!), forthwith could you rush forth by our commands.

Now, of these the female is doubly wrathful to those who meet with her bite, and she is more full even in her trailing cord (i.e., tail). And for this reason destiny shall come as a rather swift sort of death.

One of the keys to Nicander's poetic imagery is readily evident: going without food. Most everyone takes this to mean 'fasting.' Jean-Marie Jacques in his Budé edition makes an effort to explain why it's worse to be bitten on an empty stomach, but even if this is a legitimate point it ignores the poetic function. Compare Iliad 19.163 with the same phrase in the same sedes (with gen. sg.; N. has pl.). Odysseus is beseeching Achilles to allow the Achaeans to eat before battle, and argues that no man, no matter how up to the fight, has the strength to go on at the end of the day without food.

The image is then one of battle, and Nicander wants us to read the lines in this way, with the addressee as the weary soldier at the behest of his commander. He's too weak on his own, but there's hope for a fighting chance in the special knowledge which Nicander has to impart. The imagery is maintained (e.g., ἄντομαι is common of meeting in battle).

The problem with the Gow-Scholfield translation is that it obscures what's poetic in Nicander in pursuit of clarifying what is supposed to be 'scientific' or 'substantive.'

Another problem, though, is that inattentiveness to the stylistic effects has also obscured some interesting stuff in the syntax. Among these is the masculine adjective θοώτερος seemingly agreeing with αἶσα. Jacques explains this as syllepsis because θανάτοιο αἶσα = θάνατος. But cf. also Smyth 1050 where a predicate adjective in the superlative often agrees with a dependent genitive. It's a small step to the comparative.

I don't pretend to have given an elegant translation. It was was written on the spot for the purpose of this post. But I think it's important to retain the imagery and spirit of verse, and to use the vocabulary of verse, which is a different thing from that of prose though the lines are often blurred today. I think in reading the two my version seems more lively and stylized, has the feeling of interested instruction and genuine threat. At the very least it seems more like the Greek to me than the other.

But now I must needs eat some pasta lest I fall upon a nest of vipers undernourished!

Greek Numerals - Easy as AIR

I'm still trying to get the hang of posting images with Google's Hello, but after seven attempts here's a little jpeg I made to demonstrate Greek numerals. (I came up with this while covering a study hall as a sub.)


Greek Numerals 

The system incorporates 27 characters from the archaic alphabet, which means the inclusion of digamma (or sometimes stigma), koppa, and sampi. You'll notice that digamma (based on semitic wau) looks similar to and occupies the same position as Latin f. Likewise, koppa with Latin q.

Using this chart is fairly simple. The mnemonic AIR (alpha, iota, rho : αιρ) will help you to remember that these three character represent one, ten, and one hundred. Since there are 27 charαcters, or 9 each for ones, tens, and hundreds, the system allows for numbers as high as 999 (sampi koppa theta).

Numerals are normally marked by a stroke to the upper right (α' = 1), but multiples of 1000 are marked by a stroke to the lower left (,α = 1000).

Remember that these are all multiples: iota is 1 times 10 (10), kappa is 2 times 10 (20). 11 would be iota alpha (ια'), and 12 would be iota beta (ιβ').

Who knew it was that easy?

Browsing at the New Acquisitions Table

As the title states, I was just browsing at the new acquisitions table in the library. I noticed that they had the Bude addition of the Theriaka. Dennis: I'm assuming you have that available to you, but if not, let me know and I can copy any relevant sections for you. I also saw a fairly recent (2002) book by W. Clausen on the Aeneid with which I'm not familiar and whose subtitle is 'Decorum, Allusion, and Ideology'. Has anyone read any of it? Thoughts? For any Bryn Mawr readers in the Aeneid seminar: have you come across this book?

A couple other things of interest to me were a book on the 3rd century persecutions of Decius and Valerian and another collection called Early Christian Families in Context.

And Speaking of Solidi...

...Sarah brings us a link to a pucker-faced Honorius solidus, worth reproducing here:

No Direction Home

I saw one of the best correctives I've come across in a while to academic extravagance in mountain-out-of-a-molehill-making (often in evidence in my own papers) while watching part two of Scorsese's recent Bob Dylan bio-pic No Direction Home. During the footage of a 1965 press conference in San Francisco, a reporter tries to inquire into the 'significance' of the Triumph Motorcycle t-shirt he is wearing on the cover of Highway 61 Revisited, telling him that there is a 'philosophy' embedded in it. Dylan's response is to laugh and tell the reporter he hasn't really spent a lot of time looking at it (the reporter says he has spent a lot of time looking at it) and says it was just a picture somebody took one day while he was sitting on the steps.

Not one to give up, the reporter asks if he can talk about the meaning of the motorcycle image in his song-writing. Dylan's only response to this is, 'Well, we all like motorcycles, don't we?', or something to that effect.

The moral of this story is: sometimes a t-shirt is just a t-shirt. I have to remind myself of that sometimes, when puzzling over individual words in a poem and attempting to make an entire interpretation hang on what, to the author, might have been a rather insignificant detail. That doesn't mean these details are always insignificant, but it seems good at least to pause over them, to take a step back and ask the more general questions: does this interpretation I'm gleaning from this one word make sense in the broader scope of the poem? How does it fit in with the whole body of data I'm working with? Would the author have used the word in this way and with this significance? What is his normal practice? How does he mark what is important and what is not in his poem, if at all? Am I foisting my own intent on the author, trying to make a square poem fit in a round hole, as it were? Or does it cohere with the rest of the work?

Ok. I'm done babbling. But it is always nice to find a reminder in a surprising place which causes some reflection on the pitfalls of interpretation--one which pulls me for a moment from the hermetically-sealed bubble in which I often attempt to work with ancient texts out into the wider world.

M-W's Word of the Day for All Y'all Late Antique and Numismatic Types

solidus \SAH-luh-dus\ noun

1 : an ancient Roman gold coin introduced by Constantine and used to the fall of the Byzantine Empire
*2 : a mark / used typically to denote "or" (as in and/or), "and or" (as in straggler/deserter), or "per" (as in feet/second)

Example sentence:
In her latest thriller, the author manipulates her readers into believing there are two killers until the final page, where she connects their two names with a solidus.

Did you know?
Call it a solidus, or call it a slash/diagonal/slant/virgule — whatever you call it, you are bound to run into this useful mark with some regularity. These days, one place the mark is commonly seen is in Internet addresses (http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/mwwod.pl, for example), but the history of the word "solidus" takes us back to a time well before computers. The ancient Roman emperor Constantine the Great borrowed the Latin term for "solid" ("solidus") for the gold coin that was the successor to the aureus. And in Medieval Latin, "solidus" designated the shilling. Before the introduction of decimal coinage, abbreviations of the shilling ("s," "sh," or "shil") were used. Eventually, the abbreviations were replaced with the simple symbol "/," which became known as a solidus.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

I never knew that the mark '/' was called a solidus. So perhaps now we should begin saying things such as 'The web address is aitch tee tee pee colon solidus solidus...'?

Milton as a Reader of Nicander

In Milton's essay Of Education we learn that if only we should teach children, in addition to the usual arts and sciences, 'the helpful experience of hunters, fowlers, fisherman, shepherds, gardners, apothecaries,' then 'those poets which are now counted most hard will be both facile and pleasant: Orpheus, Hesiod, Theocritus, Aratus, Nicander, Oppian, Dionysius, and in Latin, Lucretius, Manilius, and the rural part of Virgil.'

It comes as no surprise then when we find Nicander creeping up in book X of Paradise Lost. Satan has returned triumphantly to Hell and makes a self-congratulatory speech which doesn't go over quite so well. Note, particularly, the list of snakes, which even includes a scorpion, from verses 524-529:

504    So having said, awhile he stood expecting
505    Their universal shout and high applause
506    To fill his ear; when, contrary, he hears
507    On all sides from innumerable tongues
508    A dismal universal hiss, the sound
509    Of public scorn. He wonder'd, but not long
510    Had leisure, wond'ring at himself now more:
511    His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare,
512    His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwining
513    Each other till, supplanted, down he fell
514    A monstrous serpent on his belly prone,
515    Reluctant but in vain: a greater power
516    Now rul'd him, punish'd in the shape he sinn'd,
517    According to his doom. He would have spoke,
518    But hiss for hiss return'd with forked tongue
519    To forked tongue; for now were all transform'd
520    Alike, to serpents all, as accessories
521    To his bold riot. Dreadful was the din
522    Of hissing through the hall, thick-swarming now
523    With complicated monsters, head and tail:
524    Scorpion and asp and amphisbaena dire,
525    Cerastes horn'd, hydrus, and ellops drear,
526    And dipsas (not so thick swarm'd once the soil
527    Bedropp'd with blood of Gorgon, or the isle
528    Ophiusa); but still greatest he, the midst,
529    Now dragon grown, larger than whom the sun
530    Engender'd in the Pythian vale on slime,
531    Huge Python; and his power no less he seem'd
532    Above the rest still to retain. They all
533    Him follow'd, issuing forth to th' open field,
534    Where all yet left of that revolted rout,
535    Heav'n-fall'n, in station stood or just array,
536    Sublime with expectation when to see
537    In triumph issuing forth their glorious Chief.
538    They saw, but other sight instead--a crowd
539    Of ugly serpents. Horror on them fell,
540    And horrid sympathy; for what they saw
541    They felt themselves now changing. Down their arms,
542    Down fell both spear and shield, down they as fast;
543    And the dire hiss renew'd, and the dire form
544    Catch'd by contagion, like in punishment
545    As in their crime. Thus was th' applause they meant
546    Turn'd to exploding hiss, triumph to shame
547    Cast on themselves from their own mouths. There stood
548    A grove hard by, sprung up with this their change
549    (His will who reigns above) to aggravate
550    Their penance, laden with fair fruit, like that
551    Which grew in Paradise, the bait of Eve
552    Us'd by the Tempter. ...

Milton has clearly read Apollonius, Nicander, and Lucan.

If only more of us had been educated in his manner, we'd more easily see the allusion.

D gets in on the book action

Here are all (I think all) of my book finds for the past month:

• 101 Puzzles in Thought and Logic (Math & Logic Puzzles), C. R. Wylie
  
• ABC of atoms, Bertrand Russell
  
• American Heritage dictionary of idioms, Christine Ammer
  
• Anthology of Latin poetry, Robert Yelverston Tyrell
  
• Brideshead revisited, Evelyn Waugh
  
• Byzantium and Europe, Speros Vryonis
  
• Cassell's Italian dictionary,
  
• The Charioteer, Mary Renault
  
• The Cherry orchard a comedy, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
  
• Christmas holiday, W. Somerset Maugham
  
• Classical hand-list;, John Arbuthnot Nairn
  
• The classical heritage and its beneficiaries, R. R. Bolgar
  
• A clerk of Oxenford; essays on literature and life, Gilbert Highet
  
• The crown the Philippics and ten other orations, Demosthenes
  
• Das Nibelungenlied,
  
• De l'Institution des Enfants, Essais, liv. I, chap. xxv, Michel de Montaigne
  
• Dean's December, Saul Bellow
  
• Deutscher lehrgang, Eduard Prokosch
  
• A dictionary of economics, John Black
  
• Dictionary of historical terms, Chris Cook
  
• A dictionary of linguistics, Mario Pei
  
• Did you ever see a dream walking? American conservative thought in the twentieth century, William F. Buckley
  
• Dutch vocabulary, B. C. Donaldson
  
• The education of Henry Adams, Henry Adams
  
• The eleven comedies, Aristophanes
  
• The empire of reason : how Europe imagined and America realized the enlightenment, Henry Steele Commager
  
• End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama
  
• The end of racism : principles for a multiracial society, Dinesh D'Souza
  
• English stress; its form, its growth, and its role in verse, Morris Halle
  
• The essays of Michel de Montaigne, Michel de Montaigne
  
• Framley parsonage, Anthony Trollope
  
• Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
  
• French Revolution: a history, Thomas Carlyle
  
• Goethe, J.-F. Angelloz
  
• Golden lion of Granpere, Anthony Trollope
  
• Graphically speaking : an illustrated guide to the working language of design and printing, Mark Beach
  
• Greek: A Complete Course for Beginners (Teach Yourself Books), Aristarhos Matsukus
  
• A handbook of Greek mythology including its extension to Rome, H. J. Rose
  
• Henderson, the rain king, Saul Bellow
  
• Herzog, Saul Bellow
  
• Histoire de l'eloquence latine depuis l'origine de Rome jusqu'à Ciceron, Victor Cucheval
  
• Histoire de l'éloquence romaine depuis la mort de Cicéron jusqu'à l'avènement de l'emper, Victor. [from old catalog] Cucheval
  
• Histoire des oracles Du bonheur. Essai sur l'histoire. Dialogues des morts, Fontenelle, M. de
  
• Historians' fallacies; toward a logic of historical thought, David Hackett Fischer
  
• A history of Greece to the death of Alexander the Great, J. B. Bury
  
• A history of private life, (vols. 1 & 2)
  
• The house of intellect, Jacques Barzun
  
• Humboldt's gift, Saul Bellow
  
• An introduction to linguistic science, Edgar H. Sturtevant
  
• An introduction to Roman history, literature, and antiquities, Alexander Petrie
  
• Johnson's London; selected source materials for freshman research papers, Roland Bartel
  
• La guerre civile la pharsale . tome 1, livres I-V, texte établi par a. bourgery., Lucain
  
• Langenscheidt's new college German dictionary,
  
• Latter-day pamphlets, Thomas Carlyle
  
• Le Symbolisme dans la mythologie grecque, Paul Diel
  
• Learning to look; a handbook for the visual arts, Joshua Charles Taylor
  
• Les Phéniciens et l'Odyssée, Victor Bérard
  
• Liberal education (Beacon paperback no. 86), Mark Van Doren
  
• The life and strange surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
  
• Linguaphone; introduction to Russian grammar,
  
• Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
  
• Man's unconquerable mind; studies of English writers, Raymond Wilson Chambers
  
• Method of philological study of the English language, Francis Andrew March
  
• Michelet oeuvres choisies, Gaillard H.
  
• The natural, Bernard Malamud
  
• A new introduction to Greek, Alston Hurd Chase
  
• A new Russian grammar in two parts, Anna Hering Semeonoff
  
• Nieuw volledig Engelsch-Nederlandsch en Nederlandsch-Engelsch woordenboek, I. M. Calisch
  
• Notre-Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo
  
• Oeuvres, François Rabelais
  
• Official Scrabble Players Dictionary,
  
• On heroes, hero-worship, and the heroic in history, Thomas Carlyle
  
• Patriotic gore; studies in the literature of the American Civil War, Edmund Wilson
  
• Pensées de Pascal, Blaise Pascal
  
• Point Counter Point, Aldous Huxley
  
• The rights of woman, Mary Wollstonecraft
  
• Samuel Johnson, John Wain
  
• Say It In French: Phrase Book for Travelers, Leon J. Cohen
  
• The small house at Allington, Anthony Trollope
  
• Songwriting : a complete guide to the craft, Stephen Citron
  
• Source readings in music history from classical antiquity through the romantic era, W. Oliver Strunk
  
• The story of Apollonius, King of Tyre : a study of its Greek origin and an edition of the two oldest Latin recensions, G. A. A. Kortekaas
  
• The story of philosophy; the lives and opinions of the greater philosophers, Will Durant
  
• The synonym finder, J. I. Rodale
  
• Thomas Mann: profile and perspectives with two unpublished letters and a chronological list of important events, André Von Gronicka
  
• Three comedies: The circle, Our betters, The constant wife, W. Somerset Maugham
  
• To Jerusalem and back a personal account, Saul Bellow
  
• The voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin
  
• The way of all flesh, Samuel Butler
  
• Winnie ille Pu, A. A. Milne

Wow ... an even 90. And I paid about $30 for the lot.

MORE: Eric ... do you think the W. Oliver Strunk who wrote Source readings in music history from classical antiquity through the romantic era is your Oliver Strunk?

More on 'd.d.'

Caelestis suggests below that the abbreviation stands for 'donum dat/dedit'. I was looking through the epigraphy book mentioned below and have found some confirming evidence. In it is reproduced an inscription from an obelisk in Rome:

IMP.CAESAR.DIVI.F
AVGVSTVS
PONTIFEX.MAXIMUS
IMP.XII.COS.XI.TRIB.POT.XIV
AEGVPTO.INPOTESTATEM
POPVLI.ROMANI.REDACTA
SOLI.DONVM.DEDIT

And here are a few more abbreviations (the second of which lends support to Dennis' suggestion 'dedit') listed in chapter 7 employing the letter 'D':

D: dat
D, D.D: dedit
D, DED, DD: dedicavit
D.D.D: dedit idemque dedicavit
D.D: dono dedit (is dono some sort of predicative dative here? Or is this a parallel construction to one in which we would find the accusative of the person and the ablative of the thing (cf. Allen & Greenough 225d)?)

Book Buys 2

Ok, so today I returned to the book sale and stuck more to the task at hand (which is not to say that I still didn't have a few divergences). Thankfully there were still some items of interest that I hadn't noticed yesterday, and some that I had, but put off getting.

Bloch, Raymon. L'epigraphie latine (in the 'que sais-je?' series).
Brueder Grimm. Kinder- und Hausmaerchen.
Christ, W., and M. Paranakis. Anthologia Graeca Carminum Christianorum (Hildesheim 1963).
Dickens, Charles. The Life of Our Lord (the title of the work in the original manuscript written for his own children is The History of Our Saviour Jesus Christ).
Dolan, John P., ed. and trans. The Essential Erasmus.
Fraser, W.H., and J. Square. Heath's Practical French Grammar.
Friend, A.M., Jr. The Portraits of the Evangelists in Greek and Latin Manuscripts (reprinted from Art Studies: 1927).
Lateinische Gedichte Deutscher Humanisten (Lateinisch/Deutsch).
Lawall, Gilbert. Theocritus' Coan Pastorals: A Poetry Book.
Langenscheidt's German-English/English-German Dictionary.
Lesky, Albin. Die Tragische Dichtung Der Hellenen (paperback).
Porphyry. Peri Apochhs Empsuchwn (De l'abstinence), tome 1, livre 1 in the Bude series, edited with French translation by Jean Bouffartigue.
Waugh, Evelyn. Black Mischief.

Ok, so maybe I went a little overboard. But I was given the advice previously to build the library (Field of Dreams style?...Well, maybe not).

St. Cecilia

Rogueclassicism tells us that today is the anniversary of the martyrdom of St. Cecilia, patron saint of music. Here is a shot of the facade of S. Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome, thought (I think) to be on the site of her house and martyrdom:

When her tomb was opened in the late 1599, supposedly her body was found in tact and undecayed, and the sculptor Stefano Maderno, present at the opening, was able to depict it:


There are some excavations underneath the church of Roman remains which I haven't visited yet, but would like to. If and when I do, I'll try to get some pics up from them.

UPDATE: I had a feeling that some of the information I read on the catholic-forum.com site conflicted with something I had read before. Here is what the Blue Guide for Rome says (whence some of the above information also comes):

[The church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere is] on the site of the house of St. Cecilia and her husband St. Valerian, whome she converted to Christianity. This building was adapted to Christian use probably in the 5C, and the body of St. Cecilia was transferred here and a basilica erected by Paschal I (817-24). The church, radically altered from the 16C onwards, was partly restored to its original form in 1899-1901. The slightly leaning campanile dates from 1120.

St. Cecilia, a patrician lady of the gens Cornelia, was martyred in 230, during the reign of Alexander Severus. She was shut up in the calidarium of her own baths, to be scalded to death. Emerging unscathed, she was beheaded in her own house, but the executioner did such a bad job that she lived for three days afterwards. She was buried in the Catacombs of St. Calixtus, where her body remained until its reinterment in her church in 820. As the inventor of the organ, she is the patron saint of music. On 22 November churches hold musical services in her honour.

Book Sale Scores

The library had a book sale today, and I picked up a few things:

Berg, William. Early Virgil.
Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim's Progress.
Die Bibel (Luther's German translation)
Cassell's New French Dictionary. (I actually like Harper/Collins/Robert, but I wanted to get a copy of this as well.)
James, Henry. Italian Hours.
Kierkegaard, Soren. Either/Or (translation).
Pascal, Blaise. Pensees (translation by W.F. Trotter with an introduction by T.S. Eliot).
Septuaginta X (ed. A Rahlfs): Psalmi cum Odis (the 'Odes' are Novem Odae ecclesiae graecae). Handwritten in the front is, I believe, the name of William Strunk's (of 'Strunk and White' fame) son Oliver. Perhaps someone can tell me what this inscription means. It reads: 'O. Strunk d.d. J. Raasted, Sept. '63'. Does anyone know what the 'd.d.' stands for?

As you can tell, I didn't do a very good job of sticking to classics books, but I am very glad to have gotten a copy of Berg; there's a lot I enjoy in that book. There were some others in the classics field I wanted to get, but I was getting outside of what I thought I should spend. The one I'm most disappointed to have passed up was John Jones' On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy, my personal favorite as far as works on the Poetics and Greek Tragedy go. I also passed on a Cassell's Latin Dictionary, which I don't actually own. There was a pristine copy of the Appolonius Rhodius Loeb as well, and Merrill's Catullus. In addition, they had the first part of an edition of the Catalepton, with Latin, English, and Latin commentary. Finally, I had to pass on A.P. Burnett's The Art of Bacchylides.

Dennis: they had a very nice edition of Victor Bers' Greek Poetic Syntax in the Classical Age. I think it was about EUR 8 ($10 or $12). Let me know if you want it and I could try to pick it up if it's still there.

UPDATE: I have a hunch 'd.d.' could stand for dedicavit. Can anyone confirm or deny?

UPDATE 2: I was just poking around at the book sale again and came across Charles Segal's copy of Anne Lebeck's Studies in Aeschylus. They seem to have had several tragedy books that I missed the first time around, as I saw someone absconding with Winnington-Ingram's Studies in Aeschylus. Ah, well.

Comment Moderation and Numismatics

First a bit of business: apologies to anyone who posted a comment recently only to find it no appear. We don't know how comment moderation was enabled (perhaps all of that numismatic wine Eric's been drinking?) but it wasn't intentional, it's been turned off, and all such comments have been indiscriminately approved and posted.

But back to that wine, I said in the comments that I'd link to Sarah's blog if she posted about the coin we identified the other day, and sure enough she has. So here it is: a Cilician coin from Tarsus featuring the emperor Gallus Trebonianus (Gaius Vibius) with interesting translations and transliterations from Latin into Greek.

Golden Latin Artistry

The epigraph in L.P. Wilkinson's Golden Latin Artistry is too good not to share:

Gaius Lucilius...used to say that he wished to be read neither by the very unlearned nor by the very learned; for the former would understand nothing, the latter perhaps more than himself. (Cicero, De Oratore, II, 25)

Numismatists, Unite! (Part 2)

All right, I have another wine-bottle numismatics question for you. This picture's a lot blurrier than the last one, but it purports to be a coin of one of the Marcus Porcius Catos (or 'Porky', as I like to call them). I'm assuming it must be Cato the Elder, since he was from Tusculum. I say this because Tusculum is south-east of Rome, and this particular wine, Frascati, comes from the region south-east of Rome. (Cato the Younger, on the other hand, was born in Rome.) I suppose the photo might be too blurry even to ask, but can anyone make this out well enough to know if it's real, as Sarah proved the last one to be?

Meter rant, cont'd.

The last post should still have been in draft mode, but I'll let it stand since people have presumably read it, and it makes sense as it goes.

The basic argument, I think, is sound: the meters of Greek and Latin poetry are a tricky business, still rife with controversy and theories and still a fertile field for further study.

A lot of good and important books were left out of the last post. The Sounds of Greek by W.B. Stanford comes to mind, though it isn't really about meter. That gives you a clue that meter alone isn't much of a study. Even when prosody is given its due attention (cf. the work of Devine & Stephens) the work is inadequate. When you talk about 'the prosody of Greek speech' which Greeks in which era speaking which dialect do you mean, and how does that impact, say, the analysis of the metrical practices of a Hellenistic poet mimicking those of an archaic model?

It's for reasons like these that I'll always remain a positivist, however dirty a word it has become in the academy. Imagine the sort of synchronistic analysis found in this area applied to numismatics: we take coins of all periods, because, afterall, COINAGE is our concern, and extrapolate a set of rules and laws, then publish countless articles about how individual coins break the rules.

The kind of rudimentary diachronic work that West did in his Greek Metre is a step in the right direction, but what's really needed is for students to look at the individual texts of individual poets.

Having done that with Nicander I learned more about meter in general than I ever had by reading manuals, but I also learned that the statistics published in every relevant source--e.g., Lingenberg's dissertation and it's followers (Kroll's RE entry, West in GM) and J.-M. Jacques--are demonstrably incorrect and that it's not accurate to classify Nicander as 'very Callimachean' as everyone does.

This isn't going anywhere ... just another rambling post.

Did somebody say meter?

(This was going to be a comment to Eric's latest post, but it seems too long for that.)

As for meter, it's a tough and tricky business to get involved in. You need to read a number of things very actively, but most importantly you need to actively read verse aloud. Not only do the various meters have their own rhythms, but so do individual poets. I first noticed this reading Roman satire. When we moved from Horace to Persius to Juvenal I found myself stumbling at first. But familiarity with Juvenal's rhythms led me to mark a few lines as spurious in the margin only to find later that Edward Courtney doubted the very same lines, I think on different grounds.

You should begin with poetry that you enjoy, preferably that you care about, and you should let the verse tell you what it's doing without trying to impose rules gleaned from handbooks (many supposed laws are nothing more than tendencies, and are often tendencies of only specific, usually late writers). Remember that Greek meter apparently grew out of music, out of rhythm, which is measured in time as perceived aurally. You must then read the verse so that you can hear it, and must try to read it not only as linguists have restored the sounds for us, but also so that you can hear the differences between different sounds (this means pronouncing eta differently from epsilon iota, etc., or in Latin pronouncing classical verse classically, and not in the manner of the Church).

Halporn, Ostwald, and Rosenmeyer can be a valuable guide at this stage, but it, and all of the other handbooks, will be largely useless if you can't hear the verse.

Here's a quick take on some of the more prominent books:

Halporn, Ostwald, and Rosenmeyer (a translation of H. & O.'s Lateinische Metrik with R.'s liberal adaptation of Bruno Snell's Griechische Metrik) is great for what it is but so much that students will want to know is omitted, presumably because they should be able to ask their teachers. But teachers increasingly know less and less (or nothing) about it. For those who can read French I'd recommend W.J.W. Koster Traité de métrique grecque. It's not the same kind of reference, but it's more useful as you advance.

In fact, Koster recommends Masqueray's book of the same name which is very old and hard to come by, but I've found it to be very useful for all sorts of odd questions (like the placement of the caesura when dealing with enclitics, which may seem obvious, but which doubtless plagues students).

I actually think you should read Thomas Dwight Goodell's Chapters on Greek Metric at some point, preferably early. A lot of it is dated, but it'll put a number of things into context, and Goodell duly appreciates the ancient tradition which is too often referred to obliquely or simply discounted.

In addition I would read two essays by Hardie in Lectures on Classical Subjects: The Language of Poetry, and the Metrical Form of Poetry.

Paul Maas's Greichische Metrik is important and in some ways idiosyncratic (in some ways that's a good thing, as when he clarifies the nature of the 'bucolic diaeresis' by reference to a corresponding 'bucolic bridge' and illustrates the significance of the phenomenon by Theocritus' use). If you get Hugh Lloyd Jones's translation you'll want to make a number of corrections (as I've done with our library's copy) from L.P.E. Parker's review (JHS 84, 1964, 173-5).

M.L. West's Greek Metre is good but I think not very useful to students, with the possible exception of his initial treatment of the hexameter in which he follows Haslam's lead: hemiepes + paroemiac (cf. Haslam, 'The Versification of the New Stesichorus' GRBS 19, 1978, 29-57). West is something to read when you've done a fair amount of work with meter and can check his statistics against your own and understand where he agrees or diverges from tradition.

Avoid Raven's books on meter at all costs. I don't have the strength to attack them here. Just save yourself the agony.

I still haven't been able to give C.M.J. Sicking's Griechische Verslehre (Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft 2.4, 1993) a proper inspection, mainly because my German is only strong enough to handle what I absolutely need to read for my thesis, but it looks good, is clearly the most up-to-date of all the handbooks, and has a very attractive and detailed approach to diagramming the schemata.

Eventually you have to read A.M. Dale's The Lyric Meters of Greek Drama as well as her Collected Papers. There are a number of good individual works.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Texts but Were Afraid to Ask (Part Deux)

Previously, I asked for suggestions for an essential reading list of secondary sources on the ancient world. Here's what we've got so far:

Bing, Peter. The Well-Read Muse.
Buck, Carl Darling. The Greek Dialects.
Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion.
Dill, Samuel. Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius.
Dodds, E.R. The Greeks and the Irrational.
Finley, M.I. The Ancient Economy.
Frazer, James. The Golden Bough.
Gibbon, Edward. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Guthrie, W.K.C. A History of Greek Philosophy.
Harrison, Jane Ellison. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion.
Heinze, Richard. Virgil's Epic Technique.
Jaeger, Werner. Paideia.
Lord, A.B. The Singer of Tales.
Meiggs, R., and D. Lewis, A selection of Greek historical inscriptions to the end of the fifth century B.C.
Nagy, Gregory. The Best of the Achaeans.
Pickard-Cambridge, A.W. Dithyramb, Tragedy And Comedy (the original of 1927, not T.B.L. Webster's 1962 update).
Pickard-Cambridge, A.W. Dramatic Festivals of Athens.
Sandys, John Edwin. A History of Classical Scholarship.
Snell, Bruno. The Discovery of the Mind.
Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution.
Vermeule, Emily. Greece in the Bronze Age.
Wilamowitz. History of Classical Scholarship (tr. Hugh Lloyd-Jones).
Wilkinson, L.P. Golden Latin Artistry.
Williams, Bernard. Shame and Necessity.

Thanks to everyone for some great suggestions. I think we can still do a little more, though. If anyone has recommendations for histories or handbooks of Greek and Latin literature (for example, I have some familiarity with Lesky for Greek lit. and Conte for Latin; perhaps I'll add those) or meter (both Greek and Latin--preferably something that would be understandable for undergraduates; perhaps Halporn/Otswald/Rosenmeyer?), please please please drop them in the comments box.

Structures with Walls that Aren't Falling

I went on a little tour of the 'Protestant' Cemetery today down by the Pyramid/Tomb of Cestius and under the shade of the Aurelian Walls. Here is a picture of the Pyramid, which supposedly took around 330 days to build, if I'm remembering correctly.


For all you Late Antique/Early and Medieval Christian Art and Architecture types, here is a picture of the grave of Richard Krautheimer, a civis Romanus.

And for all you Bryn Mawr types, here is a picture of the grave of Charles Densmore Curtis.


UPDATE: I also have some non-classical photos from the cemetery here.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Here is Merriam-Webster's word for today, of Latin heritage.

vulnerary \VUL-nuh-rair-ee\ adjective

: used for or useful in healing wounds

Example sentence:
Native Americans prized the herb echinacea for its vulnerary properties, using it to treat burns and snakebite as well as arrow wounds.

Did you know?
"Vulnus," in Latin means "wound." You might think, then, that the English adjective "vulnerary" would mean "wounding, causing a wound." And, indeed, "vulnerary" has been used that way, along with two obsolete adjectives, "vulnerative" and "vulnific." But for the lasting and current use of "vulnerary," we took our cue from the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder. In his Natural History, he used the Latin adjective "vulnerarius" to describe a plaster, or dressing, for healing wounds. And that's fine — the suffix "-ary" merely indicates that there is a connection, which, in this case, is to wounds. (As you may have already suspected, "vulnerable" is related; it comes from the Latin verb "vulnerare," which means "to wound.")

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Wall in Forum

One more thing from rogueclassicism: there are a couple of confusing stories floating around about a wall collapsing in the Forum and the Colosseum being closed. I was a little surprise that I hadn't heard anything about this, so my wife went down to investigate this afternoon. She reports that everything appears to be open today, including the Colosseum; this doesn't mean that there wasn't a wall-collapse, but only that (so far, at least) it doesn't seem to have had a significant impact on site-accessibility. I'll update this as and when I come across any other information.

Father Foster

In reference to Magister Coke's teaching of AP Vergil, he might find the latest installment of Father Foster worth sharing with his class, in which the esteemed Latinist says a couple of times that Vergil is overdone, and that he prefers Horace. In fact, I think he even says at one point that there are 10,000 other Latin authors as good as Vergil (but I may be remembering incorrectly). I listened to it last night, and it was quite entertaining. Here is the link to rogueclassicism, from which you can click on a link to download the mp3 file.

And speaking of Vergil and Horace, I also learn from the rogue that today is the anniversary of Maecenas' death.

Maecenas atauis edite regibus,
o et praesidium et dulce decus meum,
sunt quos curriculo puluerem Olympicum
collegisse iuuat metaque feruidis
euitata rotis palmaque nobilis 5
terrarum dominos euehit ad deos;
hunc, si mobilium turba Quiritium
certat tergeminis tollere honoribus;
illum, si proprio condidit horreo
quicquid de Libycis uerritur areis. 10
Gaudentem patrios findere sarculo
agros Attalicis condicionibus
numquam demoueas, ut trabe Cypria
Myrtoum pauidus nauta secet mare.
Luctantem Icariis fluctibus Africum 15
mercator metuens otium et oppidi
laudat rura sui; mox reficit rates
quassas, indocilis pauperiem pati.
Est qui nec ueteris pocula Massici
nec partem solido demere de die 20
spernit, nunc uiridi membra sub arbuto
stratus, nunc ad aquae lene caput sacrae.
Multos castra iuuant et lituo tubae
permixtus sonitus bellaque matribus
detestata. Manet sub Ioue frigido 25
uenator tenerae coniugis inmemor,
seu uisa est catulis cerua fidelibus,
seu rupit teretis Marsus aper plagas.
Me doctarum hederae praemia frontium
dis miscent superis, me gelidum nemus 30
Nympharumque leues cum Satyris chori
secernunt populo, si neque tibias
Euterpe cohibet nec Polyhymnia
Lesboum refugit tendere barbiton.
Quod si me lyricis uatibus inseres, 35
sublimi feriam sidera uertice.

AP Vergil

I am teaching AP Vergil this year, and I have a student who is trying to write in meter. I check his work, show him his mistakes, and he comes back with more mistakes than before. He is a rather smart guy, and he does not give up easily. I like to see his efforts, but I feel that somehow, his time might be spent better in other Latinic pursuits. I want to encourage him to pursue communication through other means until his vocabulary and his awareness of meter are more consolidated. So, I wrote a little poem for him in dactyllic hexameter. His latin name is Tertullus. I need some feedback.

Tu, Tertulle, loqui nunc visne aut scribere metro?
non facile est mihi simpliciter fandum vacuumque
verbum adipisci, verum est insanum modulate.

How's my meter? Have I missed anything? I am concerned about the use of "metro" and "modulate." Does the poem make sense to you? Any suggestions for word choice? Thanks!
Magister Coke

Fall at Bryn Mawr

 


There are about 30 more where that came from, freshly uploaded to Flickr.

My favorite is the bottle of Lion's Head by an ivy covered tree. Nothing beats it for $11 a case. 

Not funny, but relevant.

Not funny, but relevant. 

Illuminated Manuscripts at the NY Public Library

Illuminated manuscripts, because they are handmade and often contain miniature masterpieces of painting on paper, seem to belong more to the art museum than to a public library.

But a hundred of them are on display in the library's dimly lit D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall on the first floor of the stately building at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. This is the cream of the library's 300 or so illuminated books. It includes Bibles, prayer books, atlases, scientific texts and romances, dating from the 10th to the 16th centuries.

Sounds like fun ... if you're a NERD!

(...which I think we all are.)

For Magister Coke

Magister: Last night as I was walking down Fratelli Bonnet I saw Father Foster through the back window of a bus. I know it was him; the briefcase and clean-shorn head are unmistakable. I thought about trying to track him down to say hello on your behalf, but ultimately did not. Apologies.

On a somewhat unrelated note: last night I also watched an old episode of Seinfeld called 'The Cafe'. Toward the beginning of the episode, she keeps repeating the phrase casus belli because she had just read it in a book and wanted to say it. George persists in asking what it means, and she replies, 'It's just a Latin phrase, George; it doesn't mean anything'--and this right before she boasts of her 145 IQ!

The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life

... and in this case death:

A UNIVERSITY student died after being hurled 100ft through the air by a medieval-style "trebuchet" catapult, an inquest heard yesterday.

Kostydin Yankov, 19, an Oxford University student, suffered multiple injuries and serious spinal damage when he fell short of the safety net.

. . . . . . . . . .

The device is based on the trebuchets used in medieval times to hurl rocks and dead animals over castle walls during sieges. It uses a tonne of lead weight to give a see-saw effect and propel volunteers hundreds of feet into the air.

German abbreviation question

I've come across the abbreviation a.O. in a German article and I think it must mean the same thing as a.a.O, 'am angeführten Orte,' which is essentially ad loc.

Does anyone know for certain? Reference works have been absolutely no help.

The Oldest Opus Reticulatum in Rome

This specimen, so far as I know, is the oldest extant bit of opus reticulatum in the city of Rome. It formed part of the structure of Rome's first permanent theater, the Theater of Pompey. It now forms part of the basement of a restaurant.



This same restaurant has a nice model reconstruction of the theater:

10,000 Hits!

The Campus should reach 10,000 hits today, and that's no small feat.

I attribute it to things like this: someone found us yesterday by searching Yahoo for 'funniest aminals.' (Yes, aminals ... not animals.)

And you know what? We came up as number 9.

(See the previous posts in the sidebar if you're not sure how that happened.)

A Bookish Popularity Contest

'Saranike' takes an entertaining and idiosyncratic trip through the OCLC's list of the top 1000 books. And she even mentions me at the end.

She pointed me toward the Reference list, so let's see what I own:

#4 -- MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Joseph Gibaldi
#5 -- History of Art, H. W. Janson
#7 -- Elements of Style, William Strunk
#10 -- Oxford Companion to American Literature, James David Hart
#11 -- Art through the Ages, Helen Gardner
#27 -- Oxford Companion to English Literature, Margaret Drabble
(n.b.: I don't have this edition, 'updated' by Margaret drabble, but rather the original by Sir Paul Harvey)
#30 -- Dictionary of Modern English Usage, H. W. Fowler
#34 -- Outline of History, H. G. Wells

Looking over the list, I don't want anything I haven't got, and I think I'm better with the other stuff I have than most of what pass for libraries today.

This could become a meme: which books do you own from which lists. I see the banned books list being particularly popular.

the Myth of Myth

Mary Beard has a good, readable review of a number of books which rework classical myth. One of them, Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad (which she actually enjoyed), led her to lash out at a weak 'feminist' reading, and then at Robert Graves, whom she blames:

The only blot on this brilliant book is a chapter entitled "An Anthropology Lecture". This insists, through the mouth of the murdered maids, that deep beneath the story of Penelope lies the cult of the Mother Goddess, and that anyone who does not accept the matriarchal substrate of Greek myth has not learned the lessons of feminism. This is complete rubbish (most feminists I know think that matriarchy is itself a myth invented by patriarchal culture). But I suspect that Robert Graves has a lot to answer for here.

Graves was one of the few people who believed Butler's claims about the authoress of the Odyssey, and his bonkers White Goddess is a founding tract of New Age matriarchy. More influential, though, is his Greek Myths, which has been the standard reference work for half a century now (and is acknowledged by Atwood as a "crucial" source). The success of this book is a mystery; it is dry and dense, with almost as much footnote as text over its 800 pages. It is hard not to suspect that most buyers, attracted by the combination of famous author and authoritative title, do not get very far in actually reading it. But you need to skim only a few pages of the introduction to get the clear message that the Great Mother is the key to most of what will follow.

A former professor of mine once remarked that Graves's The White Goddess was that greatest parody of scholarship he'd ever read.

Beard is right when she notes that there is no orthodox version of myth, which means you need to be careful when reading what anyone says about a given myth. Which sources are they using, combining, leaving out, and why?

It doesn't help anything to manufacture narratives 'informed' by theory.

A Question for Our Readers

Can anyone recommend a good standard reference for poetic hymn- and prayer-form (classical/non-Christian)? I realize that individual writers make a lot of modifications to the forms; I'm just looking for something very basic that lays out the components.

Let's get classical, classical ...

That's what's finally happened to Sanskrit, anyway: it's now officially a classical language in India, joining the ranks of Tamil.

Hard to believe it's taken this long (if I read one more article/preface/etc. that opens, 'In 1786 Sir William Jones declared to the Asiatick Society of Calcutta ...' I don't know what I'll do).

maGgalavAdin!

On poetry and mimesis

Peter Bing opened The Well-Read Muse with the following inscription taken from the opening soliloquy of Plautus' Pseudolus, Act I Scene 4:

sed quasi poeta, tabulas quom cepit sibi,
quaerit quod nusquamst gentium, reperit tamen,
facit illud veri simile, quod mendacium est,
nunc ego poeta fiam

What interests me most is that it captures the sentiment of the Muses statement to Hesiod at his poetic initiation (Theog. 26-8), that the Muses are capable of telling the truth as well as specious falsehoods, but it does this while acknowledging the active role of the poet against the dominant tradition of the inspired vessel, which itself is largely a Platonic invention (or rather a liberal extension of the 'divine voice').

It occurs to me that when most of us think of the Muses and the role of the poet we are dominated by Plato's view, but that even in Hesiod there was no enthusiasmos, but rather a kind of gift, which was poetry. Of course Hesiod dissociates himself from the content of the poem which follows, and thus from any falsehoods, but he is not mad. He chooses the subject, consciously summons the Muses, and merely relies on them for the facts.

This is merely a poetic conceit, one which becomes clear in Pindar, in whom the Muses are thinly veiled personifications. Even in the Modern era a poet-scholar like Robert Graves, who makes a fine parallel to the Alexandrians, championed the 'true' Muse-Poet against the 'rational' devotee of Apollo (see his Oxford Addresses on Poetry, which almost invariably revisit this theme).

I think of Nicander as a prime example of the Apollinian poet. Afterall, he was apparently a priest of Apollo, and positioned himself in his poetry by the 'Clarian tripods of the Far-Darter' (Alex. 12) and claimed that 'Claros' snow-white citadel' had nursed him.

He called himself Homeric and doubtless favored his native Colophon as the birthplace of Homer (cf. the Margites) in his lost work on the poets of Colophon (of which there were many, including Mimnermus and Antimachus). Despite being 'Homeric Nicander,' and despite his status as a poet, which he takes care to show us, he ignored the Muses.

As I'll argue in my thesis, though, he wants us to remember the daughters of memory and to notice their absence. He returns us to the place of Hesiod's initiation, doubting a spurious ascription, and immediately we recall the lies of the poets, for which Hesiod shifts responsibility, which philosopher-poets as early as Xenophanes decried, and which later Plautus squarely put on the agency of the poet: 'facit illud veri simile, quod mendacium est.'

But this now would take us in another direction, I think. It's something I aim to cover in my thesis, and that is the nature of mimesis, which I think all of this centers around. I'll leave you with this, that mimesis is not imitation or representation (and certainly not, as Fantuzzi and Hunter have taken it by misreading Plato Laws 4.719c, 'the representation of characters.')

I'll give you a hint. Mimesis was also current in rhetorical training as the 'imitation' of famous writers. Yet semantics fails us here. Are we truly imitating writers, or their style? And if their style, then what is the aim of that imitation?

It involves memory.

And that is the key to the ambiguity of poetry, the nature of mimesis.

OBITUARY: Robert Johnston

Robert H. Johnston, whose work in the digital restoration of archaeological finds resulted in ways to read ancient degraded texts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, died Oct. 19 at his suburban Rochester home. He was 77.

OBITUARY: Marshall Clagett

"His influential body of work has had an indelible impact on the history of medieval science, and the depth and clarity of his scholarship has enlightened our understanding of subject areas as diverse as medieval physics and Egyptology," Peter Goddard, the institute's director said in a statement.

Cambridge Ancient History

One more thing: my wife called me a 'big dork' today because I ran upstairs excited that the new edition of the Cambridge Ancient History vol. XII, covering the years 193-337 AD, was spotted by yours truly this morning on the new acquisitions table of the library. Maybe I AM a big dork (maybe? Come on, who am I kidding?), but I was nonetheless enthused to find it now available--I really would have like to have gotten my hands on it a couple of months ago in preparation for exams and all that, but alas, it was not to be.

Anyway, I skimmed through the contents and it looks like there might be some good stuff in there, especially for the Late Antique crowd. If anyone comes across a review of the book, please bring it to my attention.

The Taste of Imperialism?

My wife and I opened a bottle of a wine called 'Merlot Sangiovese Rubicone' tonight that has a rather interesting label. I reproduce it for you here:



There's a little bit of a glare on the picture, but you can probably see the word 'Caesar' at the top above a Caesarean coin, surrounded by Latin. Here is how the broken Latin reads:

COGNITA MILITVM VOLVNTATE [...]MINVM CVM EALEGIONE [...]FICISCITVR IBIQUE [...]RIBVNOS PLEBIS QV[...] AD EVM CONFVGER[...] CONVENIT RELIQVAS LEG[...] EX HIBERNIS EVOCAT ET SVBSEQVI IVBET

Numismatists and epigraphers of the world, unite!

Jeopardy in need of a Latinist

Tonight on Jeopardy we learned that the Latin for the old Charlie Rich song 'Behind Closed Doors' would be 'januis clausis.'

Not 'post januas clausas' or even 'pone januas clausas.'

My response? 'What is "with the doors being closed, ..."?'

Etruscan Texts Project

I haven't been keeping as close an eye on this as I should, but my alma mater, UMass, maintains an online database of Etruscan texts and other resources.

The project is headed by Prof. Rex E. Wallace, with whom I had the honor of studying Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian, and yes Etruscan (along with a bit of Cisalpine Gaulish).

(After that class we had a department shirt emblazoned with a refrain from the purifications in the Iguvine Tables: 'place the testicles on the tray.' This was, of course, in the original Umbrian.)

The site promises a new version in development, but it's well worth checking out in its current incarnation.

Forum

Here's a shot I grabbed today of the Roman Forum. On the left, you can see the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina and the Column of Phocas, in the middle the Temple of Vesta and the Arch of Titus in the distance, and on the right the Temple of Castor and the Basilica Julia. I hope to have some more detailed posts soon on specific structures, but at present sleep is beginning to call enchantingly from her window.

As a side note, thanks to everyone who has been contributing ideas for the list. Keep 'em coming!

Snodgrass on the 'Elgin' Marbles

A bit of sense.

Many of the British Museum's claims are either unfounded, or have now become obsolete.

"We own the Marbles because Lord Elgin fairly bought and paid for them" - but he did not. "More people see the sculptures in London than in Athens" - no longer true. "The Greeks would not look after the sculptures properly" - this one is a case of "people living in glass houses..." What happened to the London sculptures in 1938, when they were attacked with chisels and abrasives to make them look whiter, has no counterpart with the Athens pieces, as was shown particularly in 2004 when the West Frieze of the Parthenon, which Elgin had left in place, was first exhibited (after a long process of conservation) on the Acropolis.

Finally getting the chance to teach

Teaching has been great so far. I don't mind the extra cash (which will soon enough cease to be extra and will have, somehow, to pay the rent). But my favorite part is when I can bring something to a lesson unplanned, moments when I can spontaneously bring to the students things from my experience with real Latin that has relavance for what they're learning and which actually catches their interest. I like to tell the girls about derivatives, word formation, or the relationship between Latin idiom and the romance languages. For example, the 8th graders were surprised to learn that egregius literally describes someone as standing apart from the flock, and the 10th graders should remember the impersonal use of placet with the dative now that they know it survives even today in French (s'il vous plaît, from si vobis placet).

Just yesterday I started tutoring a local high schooler who's already taking Latin and French and studying Italian and German on his own. He had been begging his father for some time to find him a tutor in Greek. I've started him on Chase and Phillips, and after the first session he's doing lessons 3 and 4. When I showed him the conjugation of eimi he recognized the formation from the cognate forms in Sanskrit.

This is going to be fun.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Texts but Were Afraid to Ask

I've started trying to come up with a list of secondary works on the ancient world that I've never read, or never read in toto, and would like to and that seem in some sense to be seminal ('scuse the alliteration). Here's the list so far, in no particular order except perhaps that of the alphabet:

Buck, Carl Darling. The Greek Dialects.
Dodds, E.R. The Greeks and the Irrational.
Finley, M.I. The Ancient Economy.
Frazer, James. The Golden Bough.
Gibbon, Edward. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Guthrie, W.K.C. A History of Greek Philosophy.
Harrison, Jane Ellison. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion.
Heinze, Richard. Virgil's Epic Technique.
Jaeger, Werner. Paideia.
Sandys, John Edwin. A History of Classical Scholarship.
Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution.
Williams, Bernard. Shame and Necessity.

Comments are open, so please contribute any ideas if you have them, and I'll try to repost the updated list later. I'm especially interested in recommendations for standard works on Greek history and historiography and ancient religion, but don't let that limit you. Also, if anyone has favorites for handbooks/histories of Greek and Latin literature, I'd love to hear them.

The Palace of Diocletian

Via rogueclassicism, I have learned that a book from 1764 by Robert Adam called Ruins of the palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia is now entirely available online. I've only had a chance to glance at it so far, but it's pretty interesting, especially for those with a penchant for Late Antiquity.

Classics Reference Watch

I've started reading the first volume of Bob Dylan's autobiography and came across this paragraph, in which I thought those interested in the ancient world might be, well, interested. It comes as he is standing in a library in someone's apartment, after a paragraph about he pop culture of his day.

Standing in this room you could take it all for a joke. There were all types of things in here, books on topography, epigraphy, philosophy, political ideologies. The stuff that could make you bug-eyed. Books like Fox's Book of Martyrs, The Twelve Caesars, Tacitus lectures and letters to Brutus. Pericles' Ideal State of Democracy, Thucydides' The Athenian General--a narrative which would give you chills. It was written four hundres years before Christ and it talks about how human nature is always the enemy of anything superior. Thucydides writes about how words in his time have changed from their ordinary meaning, how actions and opinions can be altered in the blink of an eye. It's like nothing has changed from his time to mine.

(Chronicles: Volume One, p. 36)

In the next paragraph, he refers to 'Sophocles' book on the nature and function of the gods'--any ideas for this?

Further down:

I read some of The Sound and the Fury, didn't quite get it, but Faulkner was powerful. I read some of the Albertus Magnus book...the guy who mixed up scientific theories with theology. It was lightweight compared to Thucydides.

And then again, later in the same paragraph:

There was a book there on Joseph Smith, the authentic American prophet who identifies himself with Enoch in the Bible and says that Adam was the first man-god. This stuff pales in comparison to Thucydides, too.

Man, this guy really likes his Thucydides.

Magister for a Day

Well, in answer to Coke's query, teaching didn't go bad at all on Friday. But I suspect it's part of the reason I haven't posted anything in a few days.

I came away from the experience with a nasty cold or flu or something which I might have picked up from my girlfriend, but I think the collective germs a few hundred middle and high school students added to the soup and aggravated what my immune system had been holding at bay.

That said, the day was largely a success. Only one piece of paper was thrown my way, and it missed. Most of the students were so polite that they actually thanked me for being there. But the one thing that really surprised me was how different two classes in the same grade level could be so different. When the tests were finished, one class sat and drew pictures quietly, another erupted into a party, and the third passed notes and cast sly glances my way as if they were up to something but nothing came of it.

I'll let you guess which class threw the paper.

I was a little disappointed in how I handled one class, but I think some of that had to do with the assignment. Not that I'm second-guessing the teacher. I'm sure it works for her. Students were put into groups of 2 and asked to translate 2-3 sentences of a short mythic narrative. The problem was that the students were only concerned with the sentences they had been assigned and made a number of mistakes that they wouldn't have made had they known the context. When I went through the text with them it was clear that those who hadn't gone yet were so focused on re-reading their sentences that they took nothing away from what came before. When I had occasion to correct mistakes and explain why they were mistaken I was very often met with confusion or absolute disbelief, as when students insisted that a third declension dative was a genitive because it didn't end in -o.

Again, it may have had a lot to do with the fact that I wasn't their regular teacher. They know that I'm not coming back tomorrow, that I'm not giving them a grade. They can slack off for a day when the teacher's away, and maybe their teacher has a way of pulling this stuff out of them that I don't.

But I felt that if I were given a class of my own day in and day out I could make some real progress. It wasn't at all terrifying, so I've passed that test.

Another crazy thing is going back to middle school or high school and realizing just how young these kids are. I seemed so much older to myself when I was their age. It reminds me of my youth, and those memories are downright comical now.

I have a few more days lined up already and will be on call if anyone needs a sick day. The department head has offered to help me find a job in the area if I'm interested, and if that turns into anything I already have ideas.

Coke was talking about bringing in real Latin and I think I would like to try the Colloquia of Erasmus among other things.

But that's a long way away.

More Hanson

Since I recently posted a review of VDH's most recent book, I might as well post his recent review of two books in The New Criterion, The Long March: Xenophon and the Ten Thousand, edited by Robin Lane Fox; and “The Sea! The Sea!”: The Shout of the Ten Thousand in the Modern Imagination, by Tim Rood. The review can be found here (registration required).