Of Farming and Classics

I started reading this book 6 weeks or so ago, but haven't picked it up for a few weeks. The review is by Edith Hall. A teaser:

Most classical scholars spend much of their time incongruously reading about activities that they are unlikely ever to develop expertise in, or even witness: rowing triremes, casting metal weapons, and handling distaffs. But Grene actually performed the same tasks as one of his heroes, the narrator of Hesiod’s Works and Days. Persephone-like, for half of each year, Grene was a scholar of ancient Greek literature and thought, with something of a cult following, at the University of Chicago. But what he was really proud of was what he did with the other six months. He knew more about farming than any other twentieth-century classicist, with the possible exception of Victor Davis Hanson, who farms grapes and olives. The pervasive Aesopic tone in Of Farming and Classics is set in the opening two pages, with Grene’s description of the hedgehog he had captured as a child: “Like all hedgehogs I have ever known he managed to escape fairly soon”. The point here is not that the spiny mammal got away, but that Grene had, during the course of his life, been personally acquainted with a significant number of hedgehogs.

Symbolic Restitution

I was intrigued by the following passage in Walter Burkert's Greek Religion:

The finds from the Neolithic town of Çatal Hüyük now make it almost imossible to doubt that the horned symbol which Evans called 'horns of consecration' does indeed derive from real bull horns. The serried ranks of genuine bull horns discovered in the house shrines at Çatal Hüyük are hunting trophies won from the then still wild bull and set up in the precinct of the goddess; in the background lies the hunter's custom of partial restoration, the symbolic restitution of the animal killed. (p.37)

Growing up in the Midwest where there are scores upon scores of hunters (especially deer hunters), I am used to seeing partially reconstituted animals tacked, for example, to the wall of the living room, sometimes (I think) near the hearth, if the house had a fireplace, but often elsewhere as well. I don't usually reflect on it too much, and think of them simply as trophies, a remembrance of accomplishment. But I wonder: is there any 'symbolic restitution' going on there, lurking 'in the background', as it were? I realize the contexts are different--a house as opposed to a 'house shrine', etc. But I'm curious. Any hunters in the audience care to enlighten me?

Ars Poetica

Archibald MacLeish's short Ars Poetica ends with the rather famous following two lines:

A poem should not mean
But be.

These lines are quoted fairly frequently. For example, they were the basis for an answer on Jeopardy last night. I confess that I don't understand what they mean. Based on the lines themselves, I suppose that's a silly question, since I suppose they just 'are'. Perhaps the point is to make interpretation seem ridiculous, but leaving that aside--what, really, does it mean (gasp) for a poem not to 'mean/ But be'?

The text can be found here or here. More interesting is an image of the original manuscript here.

UPDATE: To put it a little more clearly: a believer in MacLeish's axiom couldn't answer my question on grounds of principle, for to do so would be a violation of the axiom. It seems to be intended as a metapoetic comment on poetry as such, but, given that it comes in a poem, as soon as one extracts the comment--the 'meaning' of part of the poem--to apply it to how we read poems in general, he does violence to the principle that a poem does not 'mean/ But [is]'. Dennis' idea of paradox is a good way of looking at it. For the more cynical, 'nonsense' is another.

Zeus and Jupiter, arm in arm

Now this sounds completely ridiculous:

Sci Fi is developing the six-hour miniseries "Going Homer," from "Farscape" alum Ben Browder and Andrew Prowse. Taken from the Odyssey, project will revolve around a 12-year-old, Homer Ulysses Jones, who sets off on a journey from L.A. to New York in order to escape a custody battle. Homer is able to see what others can't: Greek and Roman gods are here on earth, walking among mortals. Some gods will aid his journey, while others will seek to kill him in order to prevent him from getting home.

Aesop Deconstructs Himself

After the episode recounted previously, the students chide Xanthos for what had happened to them. Xanthos responds that it was not his fault, but Aesop's. To prove it, he decides to have another dinner-party and to give his shopping instructions to Aesop in front of the students, so that, in case anything goes wrong, they will know that Aesop, with his language-games, is to be blamed. Since Aesop has a tendency to say that up is down, Xanthos tells him to buy something inferior (ch. 54):

καὶ δὴ καλέσας τὸν Αἴσωπον λέγει αὐτῷ “ἐπειδή σοι ἔδοξε τὰ ἄνω κάτω λαλεῖν, ἀπελθὼν εἰς τὴν ἀγοράν, εἴ τι σαπρόν, εἴ τι χεῖρον, αὐτὸ ἀγόρασον.”

Aesop, of course, buys tongues again. When he serves them the pickled tongues, the students say, 'What, tongues again?!', as Xanthos turns greenish or pale and the students conjecture that perhaps Aesop's intention is to cure them of yesterday's diarrhea:

οἱ σχολαστικοὶ εἶπον “τί ἐστι πάλιν τοῦτο, γλῶσσαι;” ὁ Ξάνθος ἀποχλωριᾷ. οἱ σχολαστικοὶ εἶπον “ἴσως ἀπὸ τῆς χθεσινῆς διαρροίας τὸν στόμαχον ἡμῶν θέλει τῷ ὄξει ἀνακτήσασθαι.”

But when he serves them a second tongue, this time roasted, they wonder whether he is trying to make them sick again:

Αἴσωπος παρέθηκεν ἑκάστῳ ὀπτὴν γλῶσσαν. οἱ σχολαστικοὶ εἶπον “οὐᾶ, τί ἐστι τοῦτο; ὁ χθεσινὸς ὑπόμωρος πάλιν διὰ γλωσσῶν ἀσθένειαν ἡμῖν κατασκευάζει;”

When asked for an explanation, Aesop has a philosophico-moral discourse at the ready (ch. 55):

Αἴσωπος εἶπεν “καὶ τί χεῖρον διὰ γλώσσης οὐκ ἔστιν; διὰ γλώσσης ἔχθραι, διὰ γλώσσης ἐπιβουλαί, ἐνεδρεῖαι, μάχαι, ζηλοτυπίαι, ἔρεις, πόλεμοι· οὐκοῦν χεῖρον οὐδέν ἐστι τῆς μιαρωτάτης γλώσσης.”

The students, though, are not impressed this time. Now, they think that listening to Aesop will lead to madness and that his interior is as unsightly as his interior:

εἷς τῶν σχολαστικῶν τῶν συνανακειμένων ἐν τῷ δείπνῳ τοῦ Ξάνθου λέγει “καθηγητά, τούτῳ ἐὰν πρόσσχῃς ταχέως σε εἰς μανίαν περιτρέψει· οἵα γὰρ ἡ μορφὴ αὐτοῦ τοιαύτη καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ αὐτοῦ. <ὁ> φιλολοίδορος καὶ κακεντρεχὴς δοῦλος οὗτος ὀβολοῦ ἄξιος οὐκ ἔστιν.”

In reading Aesop's thought on the evils of the tongue, I was reminded of James 3:5-11 (Greek text here):

5οὕτως καὶ ἡ γλῶσσα μικρὸν μέλος ἐστὶν καὶ μεγάλα αὐχεῖ. Ἰδοὺ ἡλίκον πῦρ ἡλίκην ὕλην ἀνάπτει: 6καὶ ἡ γλῶσσα πῦρ, ὁ κόσμος τῆς ἀδικίας, ἡ γλῶσσα καθίσταται ἐν τοῖς μέλεσιν ἡμῶν, ἡ σπιλοῦσα ὅλον τὸ σῶμα καὶ φλογίζουσα τὸν τροχὸν τῆς γενέσεως καὶ φλογιζομένη ὑπὸ τῆς γεέννης. 7πᾶσα γὰρ φύσις θηρίων τε καὶ πετεινῶν ἑρπετῶν τε καὶ ἐναλίων δαμάζεται καὶ δεδάμασται τῇ φύσει τῇ ἀνθρωπίνῃ: 8τὴν δὲ γλῶσσαν οὐδεὶς δαμάσαι δύναται ἀνθρώπων: ἀκατάστατον κακόν, μεστὴ ἰοῦ θανατηφόρου. 9ἐν αὐτῇ εὐλογοῦμεν τὸν κύριον καὶ πατέρα, καὶ ἐν αὐτῇ καταρώμεθα τοὺς ἀνθρώπους τοὺς καθ' ὁμοίωσιν θεοῦ γεγονότας: 10ἐκ τοῦ αὐτοῦ στόματος ἐξέρχεται εὐλογία καὶ κατάρα. οὐ χρή, ἀδελφοί μου, ταῦτα οὕτως γίνεσθαι. 11μήτι ἡ πηγὴ ἐκ τῆς αὐτῆς ὀπῆς βρύει τὸ γλυκὺ καὶ τὸ πικρόν; 12μὴ δύναται, ἀδελφοί μου, συκῆ ἐλαίας ποιῆσαι ἢ ἄμπελος σῦκα; οὔτε ἁλυκὸν γλυκὺ ποιῆσαι ὕδωρ.

Happy birthday, Julius Caesar

Today is supposed to have been your birthday. Or maybe it's tomorrow. Either way, felicem natalem! Even if you are dead.

Ginormous!

I was pleased to see that one of my favorite English adjectives, 'ginormous', has made it into Merriam-Webster's new collegiate dictionary, along with words such as 'crunk' and 'smackdown'.

"There will be linguistic conservatives who will turn their nose up at a word like `ginormous,'" said John Morse, Merriam-Webster's president.

Not I!

"But it's become a part of our language. It's used by professional writers in mainstream publications. It clearly has staying power."

One of those naysayers is Allan Metcalf, a professor of English at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., and the executive secretary of the American Dialect Society.

"A new word that stands out and is ostentatious is going to sink like a lead balloon," he said. "It might enjoy a fringe existence."

I don't know. From my observation, it seems to be becoming more common. Besides, neologisms are fun. Just ask Aeschylus.

But I didn't realize that the word had actually been around for a little while:

But Merriam-Webster traces ginormous back to 1948, when it appeared in a British dictionary of military slang. And in the past several years, its use has become, well, ginormous.

It was, moreover, urged on the dictionary by popular opinion, which is, it seems, how new coinages pass into popular speech.

Visitors to the Springfield-based dictionary publisher's Web site picked "ginormous" as their favorite word that's not in the dictionary in 2005, and Merriam-Webster editors have spotted it in countless newspaper and magazine articles since 2000.

That's essentially the criteria for making it into the collegiate dictionary — if a word shows up often enough in mainstream writing, the editors consider defining it.

But the fastidious can still avoid it if they want:

But as editor Jim Lowe puts it: "Nobody has to use `ginormous' if they don't want to."

For the record, he doesn't.

But I do!

The Seven Sights

Apologies if anyone else in the classical blogosphere has already issued a corrective at some point on this bit of misinformation, but it's been flooding my inbox so I need to address it:

Philon of Byzantium, a minor technical writer of the Hellenistic period (not a philosopher as at least one reporter has it), did not compile the famed Seven Wonders of the ancient world, nor was the document improperly attributed to him written in 200 BC, but rather much later.

The oldest lists, according to the handy OCD, do appear at this time, and contain the same sights as that attributed to Philon:

1. the pyramids of Egypt
   
2. the walls of Babylon
   
3. the hanging gardens of Semiramis at Babylon
   
4. the temple of Artemis at Ephesus
   
5. the statue of Zeus at Olympia
   
6. the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
   
7. the colossus of Rhodes
   

You may notice something missing, especially if you teach with the Cambridge Latin Course: the lighthouse of Alexandria, named for the island on which it stood, Pharus. This, like many other, finds its way into other, later lists.

Well-meaning writers of the Christian period evidently lost the original sense of the Greek word θεάματα--'sights,' i.e., things to be seen--when they added Noah's ark to the list.

Now as to what has prompted this, the announcement a new list of seven wonders, one has to wonder at man's continued fascination with magical numbers.

Aesop on the Postmodern Priority of Language? (I Speak Tongue-in-Cheek)

In the G tradition of the life of Aesop (ch. 51), Aesop's master Xanthos decides to host a dinner for his students. He instructs Aesop to prepare some food that is useful for life. Aesop buys tongues--all tongues--and in each successive course of the meal serves tongues prepared in a different way (boiled, roasted, spiced). At first the students are impressed with the cuisine (Xanthos has chosen food fitting for the conversational aspect of a dinner-party), but by the third course the surfeit of tongues has become a problem and the students have become sick. Xanthos asks for soup. Aesop brings tongue-broth. The students protest, and Xanthos rebukes Aesop and says, to paraphrase, 'Didn't I tell you to get something useful for life?' Aesop, after an introductory remark, says (ch. 53):

"τί οὖν ἐστιν ἐν τῷ βίῳ γλώσσης χρησιμώτερον ἢ μεῖζον; μάθε ὅτι διὰ γλώσσης πᾶσα φιλοσοφία καὶ πᾶσα παιδεία συνέστηκεν. χωρὶς γλώσσης οὐδὲν γίνεται, οὐδὲ δόσις, οὐ λῆψις, οὐδὲ ἀγορασμός· ἀλλὰ διὰ γλώσσης πόλεις ἀνορθοῦνται, δόγματα καὶ νόμοι ὁρίζονται. εἰ οὖν διὰ γλώσσης πᾶς βίος συνέστηκεν, γλώσσης οὐδέν ἐστι κρεῖττον.”

The students are duly impressed by his answer, and tell Xanthos that he was mistaken to criticize Aesop:

οἱ σχολαστικοὶ εἶπον “νὴ τὰς Μούσας, καλὰ λέγει. σὺ ἥμαρτες, καθηγητά.”

But the impressiveness of his philosophical justification for serving tongues because of the power of language does not cure the physical effects that the meal had caused:

οἱ σχολαστικοὶ ἀνεχώρησαν. δι’ ὅλης τῆς νυκτὸς διαρροίᾳ ληφθέντες ἐδυσφόρουν.

Byzantium 1200

I just saw a note come through on the Byzans-L list about the Byzantium 1200 project. The date is significant for its proximity to the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by Western Christians in what is known as the Fourth Crusade.

Why no Byzantium 1450 project?

The images are neat and worth a look.

Ramble on, Odysseus.

Lino Bugeja, president of Ramblers Association of Malta (I'd love to join a club with a name like that), is campaigning against development on the island of Gozo, appealing to history and literature, and more specifically to the Odyssey, for Gozo has long been treated as Calypso's Ogygia. (The association is not limited to 'some Maltese patriots' as the Wikipedians would have it.)

You can read the whole literate plea for yourself, but I'll give you the end where Bugeja reallys hammers home his antipathy to land development:

As this Greek tragedy unfolds with its frightening nemesis, a distant choir pleads for the peace that comes from feeling part of something bigger, older and more potent than oneself.

Grief Lessons

Glen Bowersock reviews Anne Carson's recent book on Euripides, Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides. A little from the beginning of the review on the immediate aftermath of the death of Euripides:

In early 406 BC the news reached Athens that far away in Macedonia the great dramatist Euripides had died. The leader of the chorus at the festival of the Dionysia that year happened to be his old rival, the aged Sophocles, who, in a public gesture of mourning, had his chorus and actors appear on stage without their customary crowns. We're told that the Athenians wept.

After a quarter-century during which Athens had been caught up, off and on, in the Peloponnesian War, the death of Euripides must have seemed ominous. It came in the same year as the voluntary exile of the charismatic Alcibiades, the leader in whom they had once placed great hope. The death of Sophocles himself within months of his tribute to Euripides only added to a presentiment of impending collapse. In 405 Aristophanes made, in his Frogs, a comic but poignant comparison of Aeschylus and Euripides to illustrate just how far Greek drama had come from the majestic verses of its first great dramatist. In that same year Euripides' horrifying play the Bacchae was produced posthumously at Athens. He had written it in Macedonia, and it depicted, as never before in literature, the destructive power of religious frenzy. In the ecstasy of Dionysiac possession a mother quite literally tore her own son apart. One year after the première of the Bacchae the war came to an end with the humiliating defeat of the Athe-nians by Sparta, and, as Xenophon tells us, a wailing went up along the long walls from Piraeus to the city.

Travels With Herodotus

Here's one for the ol' shopping cart at Amazon:

In Travels with Herodotus, Kapuściński interweaves episodes from his career as a reporter with the great historian’s accounts of the ancient world, culminating in the dramatic 5th century BC conflict between Greece and Persia. Although Kapuściński clearly sees himself as a modern Herodotus, he avoids grand comparisons and constantly depicts himself in modest terms, emphasizing his confusion and ignorance in the face of the cultures and traditions he confronted during his career.

To learn more about Kapuściński , who died this past January, you could do worse than the Guardian UK's obituary.

Byzantine Cisterns in modern Turkey

Concern about impending drought leads two writers for the Turkish Daily News to wonder about the feasibility of aqueducts, the potential for Byzantine cisterns, and ultimately their practical use today: as markets and reception halls.

They never did decide what to do about the drought.

Holy Wisdom

Through bizarre imagery like 'a giant Jedi helmet' (whatever that might be) and 'robotic arms doing pushups' (i.e., flying buttresses), Melik Kaylan tries to evoke for the WSJ the Beautiful Chaos of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (the city formerly known as Constantinople).

Despite the opening imagery it's not a bad piece.

DailyLit

Here's something for those of you who are glued to your monitors but would still like to take a break with a good book now and again: DailyLit. (This one comes courtesy the Seattle Times.)

I haven't looked it over extensively, but I did notice Jowett's translation of the Republic (part of the corpus that Housman called 'the best translation of a Greek philosopher which has ever been executed by a person who understood neither philosophy nor Greek').

The site, while offering nothing you can't get elsewhere, offers it in novel way, and I think I may actually find some use for it.

Carthage's Legacy?

Reading languagehat, as I often do, I was pleased to see a post linking to some discussions on Latino-Punic inscriptions. St. Augustine and Plautus should be enough to pique the curiosity of at least a few of you, not to mention the provocative arguments of those who believe Punic survived as late as the 11th century.

Bakhtin Again

In the first part of his review, Eagleton gives a sketch of Bakhtin's difficult life under the Stalinists. At one point, he writes:

Here [in St. Petersburg], as always, he was surrounded by a close group of anarchically minded writers and eccentric polymaths. Indeed, the story of his life is the tale of one such coterie after another; they seemed to form spontaneously around him in whatever godforsaken backwater he happened to wash up. He was a man who practised dialogism as well as preached it. By the late 1920s, however, the kind of religiosity which his circle promoted [a form of Russian Orthodoxy] was in increasing disfavour with the state; and in 1929 Bakhtin was arrested for membership of a religious circle, anti-Communist proclivities and corrupting the young by his teaching.

If you think this sounds suspiciously like an ancient gadfly featured in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, you'd be right, for that is the connection Eagleton goes on to make explicit:

The thinker whose notions of dialogism, subversive irony and indirect speech ran back to Socrates now seemed about to suffer his predecessor’s fate.

But he didn't. To find out why, you can read the rest here.

Housman's Ideas about Poetic Inspiration in Later Writers (1)

Since Dennis has such a great interest in Housman, I usually try to make a mental note when I come across references to him in other writers. This is the first in a series of (at the moment) only two passages that I have come across lately in reference to the source of poetic inspiration. From Auden's Letter to Lord Byron (p. 82 in the Vintage edition of his Collected Poems, which does not include line numbers):

Professor Housman was I think the first
To say in print how very stimulating
The little ills by which mankind is cursed,
The colds, the aches, the pains are to creating;
Indeed one hardly goes too far in stating
That many a flawless lyric may be due
Not to a lover's broken heart, but 'flu.

How's that for the deromanticization of the Muse?

Bakhtin

You may occasionally run across Mikhail Bakhtin in the footnotes of more recent works of criticism on ancient authors. Terry Eagleton has a review of a new book about him by Graham Pechey in the London Review of Books. The lead paragraph:

For the past three decades, Mikhail Bakhtin has been more of an industry than an individual. Not only an industry, in fact, but a flourishing transnational corporation, complete with jet-setting chief executives, global conventions and its own in-house journal. In the field of cultural theory, this victim of Stalinism is now big business. Most of the mouth-filling terms he coined – dialogism, double-voicedness, chronotope, heteroglossia, multi-accentuality – have passed into the lexicon of contemporary criticism. A cosmopolitan coterie of scholars, some of whom have devoted a lifetime to his texts, have long since struggled to appropriate him for their own agendas. Is he a Marxist, neo-Kantian, religious humanist, discourse theorist, literary critic, cultural sociologist, ethical thinker, philosophical anthropologist, or all these things together?

(L/v A&L Daily.)

Stegner and the Lacrimae Rerum

There is a nice oblique reference in Wallace Stegner's novel Crossing to Safety to Aeneas' reaction to the depictions of Troy in Book 1 of the Aeneid. At this point in the novel, the narrator, Larry Morgan, has just received a letter informing him that his first novel has been enthusiastically approved for publication:

I pass her the letter. It says that Harcourt Brace and Company have found my novel provocative and touching. They think my characters are cut from the real, unassuming stuff of everyday life. They like my combination of irony and pathos, they like my feeling for the tears of things. They want to publish my book in the fall, and can offer me an advance of five hundred dollars against royalties. (p. 114)

Now Vergil:

Namque sub ingenti lustrat dum singula templo,
reginam opperiens, dum, quae fortuna sit urbi,
artificumque manus inter se operumque laborem 455
miratur, videt Iliacas ex ordine pugnas,
bellaque iam fama totum volgata per orbem,
Atridas, Priamumque, et saevum ambobus Achillem.
Constitit, et lacrimans, 'Quis iam locus' inquit 'Achate,
quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris? 460
En Priamus! Sunt hic etiam sua praemia laudi;
sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.
Solve metus; feret haec aliquam tibi fama salutem.'

Politicos and Latin Mottos

Back to Scotland we go for a bit of bad Latin from Parliamentarian and Beatles fan Alistair Darling:

On BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Darling reeled off Loretto School's motto - "Spartan nactus est, hanc exorna" - and said: "It was usually translated at school as 'you've attained Sparta, now live up to it'.

"But I was at school in the 1960s. When I was in my second year, I was listening to the motto in one ear and Sergeant Pepper in the other. The two didn't quite fit."

I don't like the idea of blaming the Fab Four for basic errors in Latin accidence. ('Spartan' can't be a Latin form, and est is third person where we need second.) The form should be 'Spartam nactus es; hanc orna.' (The compound exorna appears in some variations).

In this form it goes back to Erasmus whose advice to a prince (any prince) was that 'you have obtained Sparta; make it splendid.'

This was borrowed from Plutarch's Σπάρταν ἔλαχες, ταύτην κόσμει, which appears twice and is quoted as a proverb. The sense of it is that one should do his best to improve his lot, whatever state it may be. Adorning Sparta sounds to me like a daunting task. It's not bad advice for a politician.

It seems that school mottos are all the rage in the UK today. After Tony Blair stepped down his replacement, Gordon Brown, used the English translation of his school's motto 'I will try my utmost' (usque conabor). The BBC has more on that and other Latin mottos.

Mummy Dearest?

Egypt says mummy is Queen Hatshepsut

By KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer Wed Jun 27, 8:52 PM ET

CAIRO, Egypt - A tooth found in a relic box led archaeologists to identify a long-overlooked mummy as that of Egypt's most powerful female pharoah — possibly the most significant find since King Tutankhamun's tomb was uncovered in 1922, experts said Wednesday.

The mummy was identified as Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled for 20 years in the 15th century B.C., dressing like a man and wearing a fake beard. A monumental builder, she wielded more power than two other famous ancient Egyptian women, Cleopatra and Nefertiti, who unlike her never took the title of pharaoh.

But when she died, all traces of her mysteriously disappeared, including her mummy.

In 1903, a mummy was found lying on the ground next to the sarcophagus holding the mummy of the queen's wet nurse in a tomb in the Valley of Kings burial ground in Luxor. For decades, that mummy was left unidentified and remained in the tomb because it was thought to be insignificant.

Read the rest.

A complete translation of Livy

I know I'm not the only one to hunt through Google Books to find useful editions and out of print classics.

But one thing I've had great difficulty locating is a complete text of Livy. Out of print editions on the used book market are few and expensive, and plain e-texts are unattractive. I'm not averse to printing PDFs (2-up, double-sided) and keeping them on the shelf in three ring binders.

So if you're like me and you're looking for Livy, then look no farther:

1. Books 1 to 8
   
2. Books 9 to 26
   
3. Books 27 to 36
   
4. Book 37 to the end
   

QOTD

I can't remember if I've posted this here before, but don't feel like checking and came across it again today. It comes from Kathleen Jamieson's article 'Jerome, Augustine and the Stesichoran Palinode' (Rhetorica 5 [1987] 353-67). On the verbal war between Rufinus and Jerome, she writes:

Reading the apologiae of Rufinus and Jerome leaves one with the sense of having helplessly witnessed the bludgeoning of a child. (p. 359)

Review: Letters of A.E. Housman

Frank Kermode in the London Review of Books reviews Archie Burnett's expensive new edition of Housman's letters. It's worth reading for many reason, including entertaining bits like this:

He declined all academic and national honours because to accept them would be to admit comparability with other classical scholars who had received them, admiring the attitude of the 17th-century Greek scholar Thomas Gataker who refused a Cambridge doctorate because ‘like Cato the censor he would rather have people ask why he had no statue than why he had one.’ When he came across some self-critical words of T.E. Lawrence in Seven Pillars of Wisdom – ‘there was a craving to be famous; and a horror of being known to like being known’ – he wrote in the margin: ‘This is me.’ So in the course of his life he turned down everything from the OM to the poet laureateship, not to speak of many honorary doctorates. And he refused all invitations to give lectures except for the ones that he conceived to be part of his job.

That's my guy. I'll leave it to you to find the bit about Wittgenstein and the bathroom.

Well, he's not quite Lesbia, but ...

A 57 year old Scotsman spent ten long years watching the man of his dreams from afar before getting up the nerve to confess his feelings in a letter, complete with a classical reference:

Aberdeen Sheriff Court heard the letter Leverett gave Mr Davidson contained references to the Roman poet Catullus and referred to Mr Davidson as the "loveliest guy" and the "cuddliest teddy bear".

It claimed the victim had shown Leverett "affection over many years" and said there was "a beautiful poem about a young man" who wanted 300,000 kisses.

He must mean Catullus 5, which by my calculation adds up precisely to ... 'many thousands.' And not only that, they're to be confounded so that not even the lovers know how many there were. But perhaps Mr. Leverett is just a very talented reader of verse. We should ask for further insights into poetic mysteries.

Before we go, the relevant (ubiquitous) poem for our readers:

Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis!
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

Lively Up Your Latin (with earthquakes)

That title doesn't make much sense, but then again I just woke up and am about the celebrate the one week anniversary of the school year's end. What better way to celebrate, however, then to write about some new information that might supplement well the dreadful (and dreadfully trendy) Cambridge Latin Course?

Here's something to add to the CLC's exceedingly dull treatment of Boudicca (even if it is questionable that the Romans wouldn't have known an earthquake when they felt one):

Up until now, a series of bizarre events that allegedly took place at the time have been played down as exaggeration and allegory rather than taken at face value.

But British classicist Raphael Isserlin has re-examined the ancient texts and concluded that they are not simply classical literary devices, but descriptions of a serious earthquake that hit the heart of the religious and political capital of Roman Britain - Colchester.

BBC History magazine, which has published Mr Isserlin's findings, explains that the texts recall how the “statue of the goddess Victory in Colchester partly rotated and toppled over, how strange sounds were heard and how the sea turned blood red”.

Along with Dr Roger Musson, the British Geological Survey's most senior seismologist, Mr Isserlin believes these three events are likely to occur during a strong earthquake.

“The noise, a deep, dull sound could conceivably have been described as a strange moan or prolonged groan - often accompanies earthquakes,” Dr Musson told BBC History.

“The seawater change could result from seismic waves causing cliff collapses or destabilising sloping mud deposits which can muddy the water and transform the colouring of the sea.

. . . . .

The full version of 'Boudica's Earthquake' in the July issue of BBC History Magazine, is on sale June 27, priced £3.60.

I'm thinking of having the kids perform a big musical number with the Britons singing "Boudic-CAN!" and the Romans "Boudic-CAN'T!" back and forth, building to a crescendo when the suddenly the earthquake hits and the Britons have the confidence to go at their oppressors West Side Story style. That will get the kids interested. ("When you're a Brit you're a Brit all the way ...".) Or maybe I'll just have some coffee now.

Homer Manuscript Coming

Apparently, a digitalized version of a 10th century manuscript of the Iliad (which is, of course, *not* one of the poems at issue in that 'centuries-old debate among scholars' known as the 'Homeric Question') is coming soon to a travel center near you on the internet superhighway. The about.com notice sends us here and here, as well.

The 'Euripidean Question'?

When Dennis emailed me about this, I thought it had to be a joke, but apparently not. Notice anything odd in the following?

A University of Iowa graduate student won $8,000 on Tuesday's episode of "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire."

Kecia Lynn decided to walk away with $8,000 rather than answer the $16,000 question: "The Homeric Question" is a centuries-old debate among scholars over the authorship and origins of what two works? If Lynn had guessed incorrectly she would have fallen back to $1,000. The correct answer was Electra and Medea.

OCT titles

I was just entering my copy of Denys Page's Aeschylus OCT into Librarything when I noticed that one library gave the title as 'Aeschyli Septem Quae Supersunt Tragoedias [SIC].'

The jacket, the title page, and the OUP website use the accusative 'Tragoedias,' but why? The spine reads simply Aeschyli Tragoediae.

In full 'Aeschyli Septem Quae Supersunt Tragoedias edidit Denys Page' sounds like an excited statement:

'Denys Page has published the seven surviving tragedies of Aeschylus!' Oh my god! I can't even believe it!

I'm inclined to think this is actually what was intended (though I exaggerate). One could make the argument that those editions which display 'Fabulae' or 'Tragoediae' on their title pages are mistaken. What, then, would 'edidit,' 'recensuit,' or 'adnotatione instruxit' govern? One would have to read something like '... Fabulae (sc. quas) edidit ....'

Titles that use ambiguous words are plentiful, 'Opera' being the most obvious. But what about 'Carmina,' 'Historica,' 'Lyrica,' or even 'Delectus'?

Or maybe OUP just made a mistake.

On the Sublime (In Two Odes of Horace)

In the opening poems of Books 1 and 3 of Horace's Odes, we find a use of the adjective sublimis near the end. The two usages highlight two different types of achievement with a lofty result.

In 1.1, to Maecenas, Horace constructs a long priamel, and caps it by noting that poetry distinguishes him from the masses:

me doctarum hederae praemia frontium
dis miscent superis, me gelidum nemus
Nympharumque leves cum Satyris chori
secernunt populo, si neque tibias
Euterpe cohibet nec Polyhymnia
Lesboum refugit tendere barbiton. (29-34)

He then tells Maecenas that, if he will include Horace in the canon of lyric poets, he will strike the stars with his exalted head:

quodsi me lyricis vatibus inseres,
sublimi feriam sidera vertice. (35-6)

In 3.1, on the other hand, Horace contrasts the peace experienced by the simple rustic with the problems attendant upon the successful and materially rich. Since 'fear and threats' (37) follow where the master goes, why should Horace trouble himself to build a lofty, cutting-edge new house and give up his modest Sabine farm?

...cur invidendis postibus et novo
sublime ritu moliar atrium?
Cur valle permutem Sabina
divitias operosiores? (45-8)

Horace brings this imagery of rising aloft via poetry vs. via material construction full circle in the last ode of Book 3, 3.30, where he claims (in the first ode in this meter, which Garrison labels the 'first Asclepiadean', since 1.1) to have built a 'monument' out of his poetry that excels all material construction and even endures through the ravages of storm and time:

exegi monumentum aere perennius
regalique situ pyramidum altius,
quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens
possit diruere aut innumerabilis
annorum series et fuga tempora. (1-5)

Vengeance in Horace Odes 1.2

Words related to the verb ulciscor (pf. ppl. ultus) appear three times in Odes 1.2, the poem in which Horace makes the interesting transition, during the 'kletic' part of the ode, from Mercury to Augustus in what West calls (I believe, but I'll have to doublecheck) a syntactical sleight-of-hand.

The first instance comes in l. 17, referring to the personified Tiber: ...Iliae dum se nimium querenti/ iactat ultorem ('...while he vaunts himself as the avenger for Ilia, lamenting vehemently'). On what account would Ilia seek vengeance? It seems that there could be a few things in view: 1) her execution for becoming pregnant while a Vestal Virgin; 2) the murder of one of her sons, Remus, by her other son (this seems to me the least likely to be in view here, though Tiber does attempt to flood the monumenta regis (15). The Regia, of course, is properly connected with Numa, but one cannot forget Romulus' position as the first rex of Rome); 3) the assassination of Julias Caesar, her descendant.

The second use connect with 3) mentioned above. In invoking Mercury imitating a youth (=Augustus), Horace describes him this way: ...patiens vocari/ Caesaris ultor ('...allowing [yourself] to be called the avenger of Caesar') (43-4). We have moved from the divine (but personified) Tiber as avenger to the blurred human/divine of Mercury/Augustus as avenger.

The final use comes in the second-to-last line of the poem and is addressed to Caesar: ...neu sinas Medos equitare inultos ('...nor may you allow the Medes to ride unavenged') (51). Now in the purely human realm, we learn that the Parthians are unavenged. The focus has changed from vengeance for civil strife to a wish for vengeance turned to the world outside of Rome, reprising a point Horace had made in lines 21-2. This makes perfect sense in the larger context of the poem, as it is a plea to end civil wars and to turn that energy elsewhere.

Housman's humanity

I first encountered the story that Eric lately referred to in Gilbert Highet's The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature, but allusions crop up here and there, due in no small part to the contrast which it offers to Housman's published persona, which was powerfully polemical and often alienating. I think it's worth reading, so stick around through the set-up.

In chapter 21, "A Century of Scholarship," Professor Highet (who wrote elsewhere on The Art of Teaching) has some words for what he considered the worst possible teaching, namely that which views Greek and Latin as "a science, and nothing but a science."

His illustration is the life of A.E. Housman, who believed that his purpose as Professor of Latin was to be a textual critic, which is to say to work toward the reconstitution of ancient texts. Until that work was done, literary criticism was not possible.

It was admirable, and he was responsible for great advancements in philology best exemplified in his essay "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism" (available in The Name and Nature of Poetry, and some online versions may be found, though they often have corrupt Greek). I think we've gone too far in the opposite direction, producing generations of un-philological classicists who fancy themselves literary critics while acting under the false assumption that our texts are secure. But I digress.

Housman took his appointment so seriously that he abandoned Greek, an area in which he had previously received such high praise from the likes of Wilamowitz. And we should remember that Housman, who acknowledged himself a pedant, admired the legendary Richard Bentley, whose emendations are ubiquitous, often brilliant, and always instructive even when incorrect.

And in this pursuit of textual criticism, Highet believed, he became a bad teacher of poetry. This is a matter of perspective. Housman saw himself as a teacher of language and of texts, not of poems.

But here, then, comes the surprising moment when Housman revealed his appreciative, poetic soul. The following was recorded in a letter by one of his students, and reprinted by Highet:

'[O]ne morning in May, 1914, when the trees in Cambridge were covered with blossom, he reached...the seventh ode in the fourth book of Horace.... This ode he dissected with the usual display of brilliance, wit, and sarcasm. Then for the first time in two years he looked up at us, and in quite a different voice said: "I should like to spend the last few minutes considering this ode simply as poetry." Our previous experience of Professor Housman would have made us sure that he would regard such a proceeding as beneath contempt. He read the ode aloud with deep emotion, first in Latin and then in an English translation of his own (now the fifth in More Poems). "That," he said hurriedly, almost like a man betraying a secret, "I regard as the most beautiful poem in ancient literature," and walked quickly out of the room.'

One of the men who watched this said, 'I was afraid the old fellow was going to cry.' He was. In part because of the the extreme sensitivity which made it uncomfortable for him even to recall certain lines of poetry while shaving, because his skin bristled and turned the razor's edge; but in part also because of his embarrassment at feeling that he he had permitted personal emotion to escape, and invade what he held should be nothing but an objective field of thought, sterile as ice, bright as an operating table.

I think it's obvious that Highet is wrong on one point, which I've already mentioned above: it's not 'Greek and Latin' that Housman strove to keep sterile, but his very specific task as a textual critic. It was not his business, not his academic charge, to advocate for poets or to impose taste upon other men: his was simply to restore texts and teach others the skills necessary to do the same.

Outside his job, he was as human as the rest of us.

Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis arboribusque comae...

Color me excited. I just leard that the topic of our special seminar with Michael Putnam next Saturday (part of the annual Michels lecture events) is Horace Odes 1.4 and 4.7, two poems that we read in class this semester. Housman said that 4.7 was the most beautiful poem in the Latin language. Dennis has an even better Housman anecdote about the poem, if he would be so kind to share it with us and tell us where he learned of it :).

Translation: theory and practice

Maximus Planudes, the great Byzantine scholar of the Palaeologan renaissance, composed a Greek translation of the Distichs of Cato (Catonis Disticha), a collection of moral advice in Latin, of late date and popular for centuries. The portion that caught my eye was the prologue to book two:

Εἰ μὲν γηπονίας ἐθέλεις μαθέειν πολυκάρπους,
Ἡσίοδον μέτιθι κλυτόν. εἰ δ’ αὖ εἰδέναι αἱρῇ
τὰς βοτανῶν δυνάμεις, Νίκανδρος τάς σε διδάξει.
εἰ δὲ Φρυγῶν ποθέεις Δαναῶν τε δαῆναι ἀγῶνας,
δίζεο θεῖον Ὅμηρον, ὃς Ἄρεος ἔργ’ ἀγορεύει.
εἰ δέ γ’ ἐρᾶν βούλει τοῦ ἐρᾶν τε τέχνην ἐπιγνῶναι,
στεῖχε Θεόκριτον ἀμφὶ γυναιμανῆ. εἰ δὲ μέλει σοι
σὺν σοφίῃ ζώειν, κλύε μοι κείνων ἃ μαθεῖν χρή,
ὧν διὰ πᾶς βότον παθέων δίχα πάντα διοικεῖ·
δεῦρ’ ἴθι γοῦν καὶ τίπτε πέλει σοφίη σύ γε μυοῦ.

I'll give a quick and dirty translation (no time to look things up):

If you want to learn about fruitful tillage, follow famed Hesiod.
And if you'd rather know the powers of plants, Nicander will teach you these.
And if you long to learn about the contests of the Phrygians and the Danaans, seek out divine Homer, who tells the works of Ares.
And if you prefer loving and learning the art of love, follow Theocritus on madness for women.

The oddest bit here is probably the reference to Theocritus as a writer of love poetry on women.

Here's the Latin original:

Telluris si forte velis cognoscere cultus,
Virgilium legito; quod si mage nosse laboras
Herbarum vires, Macer tibi carmina dicit.
Si romana cupis et punica noscere bella,
Lucanum quaeras, qui Martis proelia dixit.
Si quid amare libet, vel discere amare legendo,
Nasonem petito;

So on agriculture Vergil was preceded by Hesiod. Despite this common connection, Hesiod was less a model for Vergil than was Nicander, author of the lost Georgica (only fragments, preserved by Athenaeus, survive). Planudes must have known this, but knew just as well that the Georgica could not be consulted, which would render his translation inept in a sense. Advice only matters when it can be followed, even if it is just a literary exercise.

Aemilius Macer will tell you the powers of plants, and he too followed Nicander, this time inspired by the Alexipharmaca, one of Nicander's two extant works (one of our principal manuscripts of the Theriaca and the Alexipharmaca is written in Planudes' own hand). The poem concerned both poisons and antidotes. Lucan, rather than Vergil, is the poet of epic, and he of course followed Homer. Finally Ovid's love poetry was preceded by the amatory idylls of Theocritus. If they did not predominate among his idylls, then at least Ovid had a prodigious output not limited to love poems.

What makes this translation most interesting to me are two things: (1) that Planudes substituted Greek authors who wrote on their various themes before the Romans, and were often their models, and (2) that Planudes only used extant works that his own audience actually could read. This is translation of a sort we rarely see, making the material as relevant and accessible to the audience as if it were not a foreign work at all while still maintaining its antiquarian nature.

The Moon and Mars

The Rogueclassicist asks for a reference regarding his notice that on this day in 357 B.C. Aristotle observed the transit of the moon past Mars.

I'm not sure that the following passage from De Caelo will help with the date, but Aristotle does here seem to mention the event to which the RC is referring. This, then, is from De Caelo 2.12, translated by J.L. Stocks:

There are two difficulties, which may very reasonably here be raised, of which we must now attempt to state the probable solution: for we regard the zeal of one whose thirst after philosophy leads him to accept even slight indications where it is very difficult to see one’s way, as a proof rather of modesty than of overconfidence.

Of many such problems one of the strangest is the problem why we find the greatest number of movements in the intermediate bodies, and not, rather, in each successive body a variety of movement proportionate to its distance from the primary motion. For we should expect, since the primary body shows one motion only, that the body which is nearest to it should move with the fewest movements, say two, and the one next after that with three, or some similar arrangement. But the opposite is the case. The movements of the sun and moon are fewer than those of some of the planets. Yet these planets are farther from the centre and thus nearer to the primary body than they, as observation has itself revealed. For we have seen the moon, half-full, pass beneath the planet Mars, which vanished on its shadow side and came forth by the bright and shining part. Similar accounts of other stars are given by the Egyptians and Babylonians, whose observations have been kept for very many years past, and from whom much of our evidence about particular stars is derived. A second difficulty which may with equal justice be raised is this. Why is it that the primary motion includes such a multitude of stars that their whole array seems to defy counting, while of the other stars each one is separated off, and in no case do we find two or more attached to the same motion?

Aurea Mediocritas and Horace Odes 2.10.1-8

Horace Odes 2.10 is appropriately given the English title 'The Golden Mean' in Garrison's edition of the Epodes and Odes. The famous Latin phrase aurea mediocritas occurs in line 5, with the phrase's two words perfectly balanced around quisquis and with mediocritatem filling all six syllables of the second half of the Sapphic line after the diaeresis, or pause.

In addition, the phrase itself is bracketed and reinforced by nicely balanced syntax and anaphora in the first two stanzas:

Rectius vives, Licini, neque altum
semper urgendo neque, dum procellas
cautus horrescis, nimium premendo
litus iniquum.

Auream quisquis mediocritatem
diligit, tutus caret obsoleti
sordibus tecti, caret invidenda
sobrius aula.

In the first stanza, neque is repeated in a 'neither...nor' construction, followed each time by a gerund. Garrison points out that the gerunds are nearly synonymous in meaning, but one warns against going too far out to sea while the other warns against staying too close to the shore.

In the second stanza, anaphora is used again with caret, this time with two nominative adjectives similar in sense (tutus and sobrius) referring to the man who wisely avoids two dissimilar extremes: poverty and excessive wealth. In this instance, moreover, the word order is also chiastic: tutus caret...caret...sobrius.

The phrases using the anaphora are balanced in construction, but refer to opposite extremes in sense; Licinius is to live in between both, and hence keep to the 'golden mean'.

The Search for Ithaka

Story on Yahoo! News here.

This Just In: Pandora's 'Box' Actually a Jar!

Nisbet-Hubbard on Horace Odes 1.3.29:

Pandora is surprisingly little mentioned in classical literature; her 'box' was really a huge jar or pithos, mistranslated by Erasmus in his Adagia as pyxis.

'Our Thermopylae'?

So says Al Gore:

Testifying to the House Energy and Commerce Committee this morning, Al Gore said that climate change presented America with its Thermopylae moment. You can't say he doesn't try to catch the zeitgeist...

Geek Joke

For some reason, my wife started the morning today by saying, jestingly, 'Friends, Romans, countrymen...'. I responded by saying, 'You know why that's a nice beginning to a speech?', thinking of the tricolon with an additional syllable added to each word. Always one to poke fun at the geek-in-residence, she responded in turn by asking, 'Because it's in the pedantic diameter?'

I chortled.

UPDATE: I guess I should note that the 'syllabic additionalism' continues in the next phrase, 'lend me your ears'. Nice, Will.

Why Doesn't My OCT Look Like This? (2)

Berkeley, University of California, The Bancroft Library, UCB 066
Part I 1. ff. 1-72 Italy s. XV
Folios: ff. 1-58 — Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Carmina

Why Doesn't My OCT Look Like This?

Actually, I don't even own an OCT of Horace at the moment, but I'm certain that, even if I did, this is not what I would be seeing.

Horace, Odes, Epodes, and Carmen saeculare, Italy, 1st quarter of the 16th century, 165 x 105 mm, Decorated initial
Burney 181, f. 90

A Brief Outline of Horace, Odes 2

2.1: For Pollio; civil wars; Horace ['H.' hereafter] prefers to sing of lighter subjects.

2.2: For Crispus Sallustius; moral poem; vanity of riches and supremacy of virtue.

2.3: For Delius; Golden Mean; enjoy life; death the great equalizer.

2.4: For Xanthus, in love with a slave girl; no need to be ashamed; mythological exempla; don't worry--H. not interested in the girl.

2.5: No addressee named, but the addressee interested in girl still too young for love; be patient; give it time.

2.6: For Septimius; bury me at Tibur; if that is not possible, then at Tarentum; praise of country/rural life.

2.7: For Pompeius; homecoming poem; had fought against Octavian; H. saved by Mercury at Battle of Phillipi.

2.8: For Barine, deceitful temptress of men.

2.9: For Volgius; it is not always winter; give up desiring your lost lover Mystes; sing instead of the victories of Augustus.

2.10: For Licinius; praise of the Golden Mean.

2.11:For Quinctius; time is short; enjoy the pleasures of leisure and wine while you can.

2.12: For Maecenas; war-themes not fit for lyre; they are better for prose histories; H. will sing love songs of Licymnia, who is better than all riches.

2.13: Addressed to tree that almost killed him; music in the Underworld.

2.14: For Postumus; death comes for everyone; your heir will get your possessions.

2.15: No addressee; private wealth is taking over everything against ancient custom instead of making things for public enjoyment.

2.16: For Pompeius Grosphus; peace of mind can't be found in war or bought with riches; Grosphus is rich, but H. has received a modest farm.

2.17: For Maecenas; we're best friends; we've both been saved from death; it will come eventually, but for now we should be grateful we've survived.

2.18: No addressee; H. is satisfied with his modest estate; on the other hand, the rich are greedy; but death will come for rich and poor alike.

2.19: Hymn to Bacchus; it is right to sing to him; he is powerful over many things, and was even able to go to the Underworld and escape unharmed.

2.20: For Maecenas; H. will not die, but his poetry will give him immortality; already he is turning into a swan; so, though he dies, he will not die, and his funeral will be corpseless, for 'the swan has flown' (West).

The Derveni Papyrus

This afternoon's colloquium looks to be interesting: our guest is Gabor Betegh, and his talk is titled 'The Derveni Papyrus and Early Stoicism'. Betegh is the author of The Derveni Papyrus: Cosmology, Theology and Interpretation, and you can read a review of the book by Richard Janko here. It opens:

The Derveni papyrus, containing a treatise by a follower of Anaxagoras probably written in the 420s B.C.E., is the most important new piece of evidence about Greek philosophy and religion to come to light since the Renaissance. It is also the hardest to understand, and all work on it is inevitably work in progress. This is the first book-length study of this text since 1997, when its crucial opening columns, plus an updated translation of the whole, were published.1 Betegh (henceforth 'B.') has made a major contribution to understanding both the thought of the Derveni author (henceforth 'D.') and the Orphic poem which D. interprets; his reconstruction of the Orphic theogony and of D.'s physical system should command wide assent. B. rightly concludes that D. 'is trying to make Orpheus' teaching up to date by providing it with an allegorical interpretation involving the conceptual and explanatory frameworks of late Presocratic speculation' (372).

You can also find a brief account of the papyrus here.

So, if you are in the Philadelphia area, this may be a good opportunity to learn about this incredible find.

Grandmaster Samuel Butler

NOTE: I can't seem to get anything right on this blog anymore. A little thought would have made it clear that the two Samuel Butlers couldn't be the same person. Thanks to the anonymous commenter for setting it straight. I was amusing myself while the kids took a test and just threw it up. But I still can't read Hudibras without hearing an old school hip hop beat.

I also forgot to quote this bit of it:

Beside, 'tis known he could speak Greek
As naturally as pigs squeak;
That Latin was no more difficile,
Than to a blackbird 'tis to whistle

(Notice the pronunciation of difficile.)

---

Samuel Butler (discussed previously regarding Homer's gender), is the source of a quotation that I use with one of my classes to illustrate 'ratiocination' (they learn the etymology, etc.).

The lines in question run as follows:

He'd run in debt by disputation,
And pay with ratiocination.

These are from a poem called Hudibras, which has given its name to a type of verse, a rhyming iambic tetrameter. I hadn't realized that Jonathan Swift wrote extensively in Hudibrastic, but then again I hadn't realized that many old school rappers did as well.

Compare Samuel Butler:

When civil fury first grew high,
And men fell out, they knew not why;
When hard words, jealousies, and fears,
Set folks together by the ears,
And made them fight, like mad or drunk,
For Dame Religion, as for punk;
Whose honesty they all durst swear for,
Though not a man of them knew wherefore:
When Gospel-Trumpeter, surrounded
With long-ear'd rout, to battle sounded,
And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,
Was beat with fist, instead of a stick;
Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling,
And out he rode a colonelling.

With wonder Mike of the Sugar Hill Gang:

A can of beer that's sweeter than honey,
Like a millionaire that has no money,
Like a rainy day that is not wet,
Like a gambling fiend that does not bet,
Like Dracula without his fangs,
Like the boogie to the boogie without the boogie bang,
Like collard greens that don't taste good,
Like a tree that's not made out of wood,
Like goin' up and not comin' down,
Is just like the beat without the sound

Wonder Mikes takes a few more liberties, but produces a more pleasing verse, adorned as it with anaphora and playing with the expectations of the meter by various substitutions. This makes up for the paucity of feminine rhymes and the weakness of those present, but Wonder Mike clearly viewed himself as a part of the hudibrastic tradition.

Classical Languages as 'Delicate Instruments of Communication'

'The ancient paideia was founded upon the literary classics. School-boys did not merely read them, they studied them with the utmost intensity, they savored in them the more recondite allusions, and they committed great portions of them to memory, with lastingly beneficial consequences, both for their own Greek and Latin style, and for the maintenance of the classical languages as uncommonly delicate instruments of communication among men.'

Arthur F. Stocker, 'Servius Servus Magistrorum' (Vergilius 9 (1963) 9-15), p. 9

No Snow/Horace

The other day I posted a snippet of Horace that was appropriate to our snowy conditions. Since it's warmed up and everything has started to melt, I thought I'd post another snippet, even though it's not quite spring yet. These are the first four lines of Odes 1.4.

Solvitur acris hiems grata vice veris et Favoni
trahuntque siccas machinae carinas,
ac neque iam stabulis gaudet pecus aut arator igni
nec prata canis albicant pruinis.

Interpretation and Theory

I believe, then, that the classicist should see interpretation and theory as interdependent activities. But the interdependence is not symmetrical. Interpretation without theoretical reflection may be limited in scope and is vulnerable to various kinds of muddle; that certainly makes it worth less. But theory that is not rooted in our existing interpretative skills is at risk of being vacuous speculation; and that would make it worthless.'

Malcolm Heath, Interpreting Classical Texts (London: Duckworth, 2002), p. 21

Wilamowitz-Moellendorff/Homer's Iliad

BMCR has a new review of a book that looks very interesting, which is centered around 'the publication of a nearly word for word transcript of Wilamowitz's lectures on Homer's Iliad in 1887/1888'. The reviewer, Edith Foster, goes on to say:

Paul Draeger and a team of sub-editors surround these lectures with a very copious and responsible supporting apparatus. However, the book reaches far beyond the editing and publication of transcripts, since in addition to the lectures it offers a portrait and defense of Wilamowitz himself.

This many layered volume begins with a short essay in praise of Wilamowitz by Walter Burkert (who is simultaneously the dedicatee of the volume), after which Paul Draeger provides an essay on Wilamowitz's character as a lecturer. He describes Wilamowitz's broad activities both as a university and a public lecturer, citing many vivid eye-witness accounts. Student accounts emphasize the appeal of Wilamowitz's deep knowledge and rhetorical power.

This introduction to Wilamowitz as lecturer is followed by introductions to the lectures themselves. First, Draeger offers information on the student copyists and on the character and history of their transcripts of the Homer lectures. Second, he provides an outline of the lectures and detailed remarks on Wilamowitz's personality as it emerges from the lectures. For instance, he compares how Wilamowitz characterized scholars with whom he agreed or disagreed (62-64), and discusses how and how often Wilamowitz mentioned himself (65-66). Draeger also lists and evaluates Wilamowitz's terms of praise and blame (56-57). Other questions have a more practical orientation. Draeger argues about whether or not Wilamowitz used a blackboard and maps (probably, 54) or brought any books other than the Iliad with him to the lectures (probably not, 55-59). Without neglecting to mention Wilamowitz's errors, Draeger provides detailed demonstrations of his astonishing memory (56, 66-70). The description of the lectures is laudatory; 21st Century practices are seen in negative contrast (53, 55).

The third and penultimate element of the introduction is a description of the close connections between these lectures and Wilamowitz's book Die Ilias und Homer (1916). Draeger argues that Wilamowitz's Homer lectures of 1887/88 are still useful even though Wilamowitz's main hypotheses about book 11 of the Iliad are nearly universally rejected (77). He points out that the lectures offer a very comprehensive discussion of the material from book 11 and that this discussion is not available in Wilamowitz's later publications (77-78). He also provides a sequence of examples to show that the lecture notes contain readings which have not yet been considered for critical editions (79-81), as well as a list of passages about which Wilamowitz changed his mind by 1916 (82-83). He might have been better off to let Wilamowitz speak for himself by this point and to place such arguments after the lectures, or even in an appendix. They give the impression that the lectures will be interesting mainly to an audience studying Wilamowitz, whereas in fact, both readers studying Homer, as well as readers studying their own received practices in historical context will find them useful.

You can read the rest here.

An Ancient Way of 'Giving One's Two Cents'?

We’re all familiar with the idea of a person’s ‘two cents’. Someone pontificates on a given topic, and rounds it off with something like, ‘Well, those are my two cents, anyway.’ I’m wondering if I’ve come across an ancient way of expressing a similar sentiment.

Toward the end of Book 1 of Macrobius’ Saturnalia, Symmachus proposes that everyone present at their discussion tell of what they have noticed to be exceptional de Maronis ingenio. Here are his words:

reliquos omnes qui adestis impense precatus sim, ut quid vestrum quisque praecipuum sibi adnotaverit de Maronis ingenio, velut ex symbola conferamus.

Symbola can mean a contribution of money to a feast, so perhaps we could loosely paraphrase Symmachus’ proposal as, ‘I would ask all the rest of you here to give us your two cents concerning what you have noticed to be outstanding in Vergil’s talent.’

Vergil the Same, despite the Praises or Rebukes of Critics

So says Macrobius' Symmachus:

haec est quidem, Euangele, Maronis gloria ut nullius laudibus crescat, nullius vituperatione minuatur... .
Saturnalia 1.24.8

Some Favorites

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another List of Classics Blogs

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

Bruce Metzger, R.I.P.

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

May he rest in peace.

Snow/Horace

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aristotle and the NBA

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

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

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

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

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

Eternal embrace? Couple still hugging 5,000 years on

ROME (Reuters) - Call it the eternal embrace.

Real people. Real success stories. Yahoo! Personals. See Stephanie and Mike's story.

Archaeologists in Italy have discovered a couple buried 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, hugging each other.

"It's an extraordinary case," said Elena Menotti, who led the team on their dig near the northern city of Mantova.

"There has not been a double burial found in the Neolithic period, much less two people hugging -- and they really are hugging."

Menotti said she believed the two, almost certainly a man and a woman although that needs to be confirmed, died young because their teeth were mostly intact and not worn down.

"I must say that when we discovered it, we all became very excited. I've been doing this job for 25 years. I've done digs at Pompeii, all the famous sites," she told Reuters.

"But I've never been so moved because this is the discovery of something special."

A laboratory will now try to determine the couple's age at the time of death and how long they had been buried.

Lhomond's cento, "Viri Romae"

The work (more fully Viri Romae illustres) is alternately known as De viris illustribus. As its name implies it deals with those men in Roman history (and myth) whom posterity has honored, from Romulus through Augustus. Lhomond constructed the work as a cento, compiling his narratives from the works of a vast array of Roman writers: poets such as Vergil and Ovid were employed alongside Cicero, Livy, and even the likes of Eutropius (who wrote during the reigns of Julian and Valens).

I suspect that many will think the book somehow 'outdated,' but it was designed by a man dedicated to teaching Latin at the secondary level (he purportedly turned down several university posts) and published just three years after darwin's Origin of Species and Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Each is still a classic. And isn't Caesar, who died more than 20 centuries ago?

The text is available at the Latin Library, but a very nice student edition can be obtained through Google Books. I've just begun using this with one of my classes. Here's a sampling of the opening lines:

Proca, rex Albanorum, duos filios, Numitorem et Amulium habuit. Numitori, qui natu major erat, regnum reliquit; sed Amulius, pulso fratre, regnavit, et ut eum sobole privaret, Rheam Sylviam ejus filiam Vestae sacerdotem fecit, quae tamen Romulum et Remum uno partu edidit.

As well as being a fascinating chapter in the history of Latin pedagogy, I've found the text itself readable and interesting. Here's hoping the students do as well.

Another take on the value of Classics

These are the closing words of chapter 5, 'The Place of Classics in Education,' from The Aims of Education.

Europe is always flying apart because of the diverse explosive character of its inheritance, and coming together because it can never shake off that impress of unity it has received from Rome. The history of Europe is the history of Rome curbing the Hebrew and the Greek, with their various impulses of religion, and of science, and of art, and of quest for material comfort, and of lust of domination, which are all at daggers drawn with each other. The vision of Rome is the vision of the unity of civilisation.

--Alfred North Whitehead (1929)

Images from Livy (10)

'Tapestry of the History of Scipio: The Battle of Zama'. Giulio Romano (model), Francesco Penni (preparatory cartoon), François Bonnemer (Gobelins cartoon). Housed in Louvre. Here is what the Louvre's page for the work says:

Tapestry of the History of Scipio: the Battle of Zama

This is the tenth and last panel in a series the cartoons for which had been copied by François Bonnemer from a Brussels tapestry in the Royal Furniture Repository. The latter was itself based on a large tapestry depicting Scipio's military exploits, made for François I in 1535. Eight tapestries in the present series are on display at the Louvre; the other two are in the collections of the Mobilier National.

Description
The depiction of the battle

The scene, which is based on Livy's account of the second Punic War in his History of Rome (XXX, 33, 4-16), depicts the last battle pitting Scipio and the Roman army against the Carthaginians. Elephants in the Carthaginian army's front lines are charging the Romans, toppling men and horses. On the left, an elephant startled by the blare of a trumpet and a horn turns on its own camp. In the foreground, Scipio, wearing a starry blue mantle, leads his men, urging them to push back the enemy with swords and javelins.The border along the sides and lower edge features a broad garland of flowers, fruits, small animals, and frolicking children. The upper part consists of an architrave, probably to comply with the dimensions requested by the first patron to commission a tapestry on this theme, the Maréchal de Saint-André, whose arms grace the upper corners.

A glimpse into art history

François I owned a twenty-two-panel tapestry depicting the heroic deeds and ultimate triumph of Scipio Africanus. "Scipio the Great", finely woven and particularly rich in gold threads, was widely admired and copied several times. Jacques d'Albon, seigneur of Saint-André and maréchal de France since 1547, commissioned from Brussels, probably around 1558, a ten-panel history of Scipio depicting the Roman general's heroic deeds, six of which were copied directly from the king's tapestry. In the following century, it entered Mazarin's and, later, Louis XIV's collections, and, in the late seventeenth century, Louvois had it reproduced at the Gobelins, along with other Renaissance tapestries from the Royal Furniture Repository. During the Revolution, the panels were sold and dispersed. In 1797, François I's tapestry was burned along with other tapestries from the Royal Furniture Repository in order to recover the precious metals. This "copy" was preserved in the national collections and offers a partial but relatively accurate glimpse of the famous tapestry, since destroyed.

An innovative composition

Most of the models for the tapestry can be attributed to Giulio Romano, an artist who did a great deal of decorative painting in Italy, as well as drawings for tapestries. His colleague, Gian Francesco Penni, made preliminary cartoons for the artists who painted the full-scale cartoons. Several institutions, including the Louvre, have drawings Giulio made of the victory, as well as studies that can be related to the heroic deeds. The composition of the Battle of Zama tapestry is both original and bold. Traditionally, battle scenes had been presented in profile. Here, the artist shows the enemy bearing down on the viewer, putting him on the same plane as the Roman vanguard, thereby drawing him into the heart of the battle.

Documentation

Jules Romain. L'Histoire de Scipion. Tapisseries et dessins, Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, 1978.Lefebure Amaury, La galerie de Scipion, feuillet Louvre 6 27Lefebure Amaury, "La Bataille de Zama, tapisserie d'après Jules Romain", in Carthage, l'histoire, sa trace et son écho, Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, 1995, pp.164-169.

Essentials of Antiquity

The other day I was trying to think of a list of literary works from antiquity besides the Bible that could be described as 'essential' based on the criterion that most (or many) people have at least heard of them by title and/or author, even if that's all they know about them. It must, it seems to me, be a rather short list. Here is what I've come up with for the Greek side.

Aesop, Fables
Aristotle, Politics and, perhaps, Poetics
Homer, Iliad and Odyssey
Plato, Republic
Sophocles, Oedipus the King

Thoughts?

"Perhaps you are lazy ..."

I'm just now memorizing this in order to respond to students:

(From The Relation of Latin to Practical Life by Frances Ellis Sabin, 1913)

Transcription (for those without graphics):

ANSWERS TO SOME COMMON OBJECTIONS TO THE STUDY OF LATIN

1. "It's too hard!"

Perhaps it's not so hard as you think. Perhaps you are lazy and do not like to do anything that does not immediately interest you and so calls for an effort of your will. Anyone who has had much experience in life will tell you that very few things that are really worth while come easily. Do you know Herbert Spencer's famous definition of education: "to accustom myself to do the thing I know I ought to do at the time when I ought to do it, whether I feel like doing it or not"?

Number 1 is the best of all, so we'll leave it there. I'm actually going to turn this into a poster.

One problem though: was it Herbert 'survival of the fittest' Spencer who said that, or another famed Darwinist of sorts T.H. Huxley?

Was ist das?

I've never wondered until now what exactly 'kleine Schriften' means, so I'm putting it to the kind visitors who've helped me in the past.

'Small' in the sense of notes, unpublished papers, and the like? Or can this include things like journal articles as opposed to monographs and other 'big' works? What exactly is small, semantically, about the works included? My dictionaries are no help.

Images from Livy (9)

'Landscape with She-Wolf Suckling Romulus and Remus', by Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), c. 1590. Pen, brown ink and brown wash, retouched in black ink, on white paper. Paris, Louvre.

There ought to be a word for that

Somebody recently traveled to the Campus after reading a post at Laudator Temporis Acti from 2004 in which Michael Gilleland wondered about a new coinage to capture the idea of hating one's own race. He ended up unhappy with misautogeny.

I think αὐτός feels out of place here. What you want is 'same,' not self.

I humbly submit misomophyly (secondary accent on the first syllable, primary accent on the third).

The phrase μισεῖν τούς ὁμοφύλους would mean 'to hate those of one's own race.' Racism, on the other hand, could find a synonym in misallophyly.

I like the way misomophyly sounds -- there's a certain pleasant sensation in the speech organs. Funny for such an ugly word.

The (re)Birth of Athena

Once upon a time I said that I was tired of Athena and off she went, and the Campus had nice facelift in her absence. Now she's returned and brought some more changes with her. (Notice her, hiding up there in the header? But what has she done with Homer Boy?)

The changes were brought about by Eric's suggestion that we move over to Google's new Blogger system. This necessitated a change in the template, and though I've fancied myself a web designer of sorts since the mid-90s, I kind of like the simplicity of this setup.

You'll notice that I've stolen Laura Gibbs's Roman Calendar, and I've added the year (A.V.C., a change I'll only need to make once a year).

In addition we've now got an RSS feed of YLE's Nuntii Latini.

More relvant to the Campus, though, you'll next see in the sidebar that we've got a more navigable 'back catalogue' (archive) and a nifty 'filing cabinet' (post labels).

We're slowly adding labels to old posts, and while this has never exactly been a juggernaut, we do have several hundred.

Which brings up an advancing milestone: the Campus will turn three on April 4th (begun with an in-joke as humorous now as it never was). In just over two months Eric and I will have been intermittently mining homework, grasping at intellectual straws, and promising to post more often for a full three years. That's one for each of our readers. You guys deserve it.

Images from Livy (8)

'Romulus and Remus Given Shelter by Faustulus', by Pietro Berrettini, called Pierre de Cortone (1597-1669), around 1643 (Paris, Louvre)

Say What?

ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- A clutch of modern pagans honored Zeus at a 1,800-year-old temple in the heart of Athens on Sunday -- the first known ceremony of its kind held there since the ancient Greek religion was outlawed by the Roman Empire in the fourth century.

Watched by curious onlookers, some 20 worshippers gathered next to the ruins of the temple for a celebration organized by Ellinais, a year-old Athens-based group that is campaigning to revive old religious practices from the era when Greece was a fount of education and philosophy.

The group ignored a ban by the Culture Ministry, which declared the site off limits to any kind of organized activity to protect the monument.

But participants did not try to enter the temple itself, which is closed to everyone, and no officials sought to stop the ceremony.

Dressed in ancient costumes, worshippers standing near the temple's imposing Corinthian columns recited hymns calling on the Olympian Zeus, "King of the gods and the mover of things," to bring peace to the world.

"Our message is world peace and an ecological way of life in which everyone has the right to education," said Kostas Stathopoulos, one of three "high priests" overseeing the event, which celebrated the nuptials of Zeus and Hera, the goddess of love and marriage.

To the Greeks, ecological awareness was fundamental, Stathopoulos said after a priestess, with arms raised to the sky, called on Zeus "to bring rain to the planet."

A herald holding a metal staff topped with two snake heads proclaimed the beginning of the ceremony before priests in blue and red robes released two white doves as symbols of peace. A priest poured libations of wine and incense burned on a tiny copper tripod while a choir of men and women chanted hymns.

You can find the rest
here.

Images from Livy (7)

'Les Sabines', by Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), 1799 (Paris, Louvre)

Liveblogging Homeroom

As I sit at my desk lethargic kids wander in and out. Only three have yet taken their seats and each is listening to his iPod, staring blankly at the agenda on the board. It's one day until the final exam and they're feeling uneasy (or worse) at the prospect of answering 250 questions and still having time left to write a translation unseen.

The coffee isn't bad this morning. The administration can't afford the best, but some kind soul among the faculty occasionally brings in little packets of half-and-half in abundance, and that makes all the difference. I suspect that somewhere a 7-11 manager is scratching his head: 'I thought I'd just refilled that.' It's a good thing, too, because it's helping me to forget my hunger and the fact that I haven't brought any money today.

So what's on the agenda today? We'll have no Channel 1, no school news broadcast either, because of the principal's noble effort of promoting reading every Wednesday morning. They'll probably read the latest texts from their friends.

But today it's review. Practice with verb tenses, cases of nouns, and a new game of team translation: the kids with the highest grades will lead teams, but may not write anything. This should help to keep the other kids active while the captains coach. Maybe we should call them coaches instead.

It's just about time for the Pledge, so I'm out.

ProfessoCop?

I came home today, made myself a nice bowl of soup, and caught the end of some documentary on Roman engineering when lo and behold I see Peter Weller.

When I see Peter Weller I can only think of RoboCop, and to Peter I apologize for that. It's just that I was an impressionable kid when he made that movie. I had no idea that Peter teaches at Syracuse and is pursuing a PhD:

Weller, 58, who holds a master's degree in Roman and Renaissance art and is working toward a Ph.D., has become one of Syracuse University's most popular professors.

"My fascination with ancient Rome started as a kid back in Texas when my father turned me on to Robert Graves, who wrote 'I, Claudius,'" says Weller, speaking from the South African set of the adventure movie "Prey." "I was always reading about the great emperors of Rome and then I started collecting first-century coins."

And he even has a good sense of humor:

Last year, Weller taught a course called "Hollywood and the Roman Empire."

"It's a classics course posing as a film course," he says. "Eighty kids signed up thinking they'd get an easy A from RoboCop. When they saw the reader was 450 pages, including Homer and Suetonius, a quarter of the class dropped out."

That was written in September of 2005. Does anyone have an update on Master Weller?

UPDATE (27 Jan 2007): David Meadows (courtesy of Laura Gibbs) reports that Wired has a brief article on the subject.

Images from Livy (6)

'The Introduction of the Cult of Cybele at Rome', by Andrea Mantegna (about 1430/1-1506), 1505-6. Glue on Linen. Housed in National Gallery (London).

The National Gallery's page on this picture says the following:

Inscribed in the centre: S HOSPES NUMINIS IDAEI C [By decree of the Senate host to the Idaean deity]. Various other inscriptions on the tombs.

In 204 BC the Romans brought the cult of Cybele, the eastern goddess of victory, from Pessina, Asia Minor, to Rome. Mantegna has combined the accounts of Ovid, Livy and Appian. Cybele is represented by her sacred stone - 'she fell to earth as a meteor' - and as a bust with a mural crown (associating her with a city state). According to Juvenal, Cornelius Scipio (probably in profile gesturing with his right hand) was the most worthy Roman citizen to receive Cybele.

This is one of four pictures commissioned in 1505 by Francesco Cornaro a Venetian nobleman, who claimed descent from the ancient Cornelii family (prominent in the picture). Mantegna only completed one before his death and Bellini supplied another (Washington, National Gallery).

Images from Livy (5)

'Marcus Curtius', attributed to Bacchiacca (1495-1557), probably about 1520-30. Oil on wood. Housed in National Gallery (London).

Images from Livy (4)

'The Death of Camilla', by Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), black chalk with brush and gray wash on cream-colored laid paper (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Some Essential Anglophone Resources on Livy

This list is not meant to be exhaustive and does not include commentaries. Suggestions for additional resources are welcome. This is a very basic list that has a number of good places to start.

Cantor, H.V. 'Livy the Orator'. Classical Journal 9 (1913) 24-34.

McDonald, A.H. 'The Style of Livy'. Journal of Roman Studies 47 (1957) 155-72.

Syme, R. 'Livy and Augustus'. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 64 (1959) 27-87.

Walsh, P.G. Livy. Greece and Rome. New Surveys in the Classics 8 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974).

----. Livy: His Historical Aims and Methods. Cambridge, UK: University Press, 1961.

----. 'Livy's Preface and the Distortion of History'. American Journal of Philology 76 (1955) 369-81.

Images from Livy (3)

'The Oath of the Horatii', by Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), 1786 (Toledo, Toledo Museum of Art)

Images from Livy (2)

'The Rape of the Sabines', by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), ca. 1637-8 (Paris, Louvre)