Bath Complex Discovered

Apologies if this has already been noted elsewhere:

Archaeologists Dig Up Roman Bath Complex
Staff and agencies
19 July, 2007

By MARTA FALCONI, Associated Press Writer 24 minutes ago

ROME - Archaeologists said Thursday they have partly dug up a second-century bath complex believed to be part of the vast, luxurious residence of a wealthy Roman.

Statues and water cascades decorated the interiors, American archaeologist Darius A. Arya, the head of the excavation, said Thursday during a tour of the digs with The Associated Press. Only pedestals and fragments have been recovered.

"The Romans had more leisure time than other people, and it‘s here in the baths that they typically spent their time," Arya said. "Because you could eat well, you could get a massage, you could have sex, you could gossip, you could play your games, you could talk about politics ? you could spend the whole day here."

The complex is believed to be part of a multiple-story villa that belonged to the Roman equivalent of a billionaire of today, a man called Quintus Servilius Pudens who was friends with Emperor Hadrian, Arya said. It is not clear if the baths were open to the public or reserved to distinguished guests of the owner.

Excavations at the Villa delle Vignacce park lasted a total of 10 weeks, and it is planned to continue, he said. Future decisions, including whether the site will be opened to the public, are still to be made.

Meeting at communal bath houses, they would go through a series of rooms of alternating temperatures at a leisurely pace, dipping themselves in hot and cold baths. It was a social event, but also a way to purify their bodies of toxins and a form of relaxation.

Twain, Vergil, Homer, Dante, etc.

Recently in the Muskogee Phoenix by a Food columnist. As the introduction to an Italian recipe, the author, who evidently utilizes an optimistic reading of Vergil, we find the following:

Mark Twain leads us to the topmost topaz of an ancient tower in his short story “A Cure for the Blues.”

This little gem is a witty literary criticism of a leading author of his day, fictionalized as the so-called McClintock, putting forth Twain’s belief that good writing comes from the writer’s own experience and the avid reading of books. He knew that a passionate writer must first be a voracious reader.

I mention Twain’s short story because it is through the reading of books that ideas are transmitted from one writer to another, from the ancient tower to the modern one. Four works can illustrate this point. Starting with Vergil’s “Aeneid,” the epic poem of the Romans, we can easily move between centuries.

Vergil wrote the “Aeneid” to glorify Rome for Emperor Augustus. Aeneas, the Trojan hero who escaped the fall of Troy to the Greeks, is given the profound mission of establishing a new Troy in a land to the West which will become Rome.

There, the oracle has told him, he will find a troia, a white pig with baby piglets, but not before visiting the Underworld, escaping perils, and jilting Carthaginian queen Dido to fulfill his glorious mission.

If we follow this thread backwards eight centuries we arrive at Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” the prototype for Vergil’s “Aeneid.” But, if we follow it forward to the late Middle Ages, we come to Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” In the first part of the work Vergil serves as Dante’s guide through the Inferno.

There they encounter nine circles increasing in severity where sinners receive a punishment befitting their transgressions. Dante’ influence continues to affect literature, his dialect setting the standard for the Italian language.

Move ahead several centuries into our time and we arrive at Daniel Pearle’s “The Dante Club.” In this well researched historical thriller three friends, Longfellow, Lowell and Holmes are furtively translating Dante’s Inferno into English when murders imitating the punishments in the nine circles begin cropping up in Cambridge just as the translators reach that point in the translating.

The men scramble to find the killer and help a widowed Longfellow finish the poetic translation.

And we can move beyond the ninth circle to Jodi Picoult’s “The Tenth Circle.” Comic book artist Daniel Stone and his wife Laura, a Dante scholar, struggle to save their 14-year-old daughter, Trixie, who has accused her boyfriend of rape. When Trixie runs away to Alaska, Daniel stops at nothing to save his daughter.

The novel raises the issue of not only how well we can ever know another person, but how well we are able to know even ourselves. Picoult has a devoted following; her latest novel is “Nineteen Minutes.”

These books offer a diversion from this deluge of rain. With the Romans as a foundation, they also give us an excuse to try an Italian-based menu this week, always a good cure for weather-induced blues.

Polytheism and Society in Ancient Athens

Dennis recently mentioned a review of Robert Parker's recent book Polytheism and Society in Ancient Athens. BMCR, too, now has a review (in French), this one by Corinne Bonnet.

The Straight Dope on the Trojan War

As an occasional reader of the Straight Dope through the years I was pleased to see the latest entry, though I was very highly disturbed by the question that Cecil Adams was responding to:

In mythology class the other day, my teacher mentioned that Agamemnon's death mask had been found ...

I would have replied that her mythology teacher be fired immediately. Cecil was nicer and actually pretty informative (but that's what we've come to expect). The argument that (Hittite) Ahhiyawa equals (Greek) Achaea and that Wilusija equals Ilios is still disputed and I think he handles it well here in his closing statement:

The point is, we know the Greeks (or at least the Ahhiyawans) interfered in Trojan (or at least Wilusan) politics and on one or two occasions arranged the overthrow of the king. That’s a frail thread to hang the Iliad on, but it’s all we’ve got.

An old but still accessible and readable account by as eminent a scholar as you'll find is given in History and the Homeric Iliad by Denys Page, which I apparently picked up in a used book store for $3.50 in my undergraduate days.

For what it's worth, on Ahhiyawa the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed.) cites only T.R. Bryce in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology (1989): 297-310.

On the End of Roman Rule in Britain

Continuing on for a moment on the topic of late Roman administration, I offer a citation from J.N.L. Myres articles 'Pelagius and the End of Roman Rule in Britain' (JRS 50 [1960] 21-36). He notes at the opening of the article that '[t]he circumstance in which Roman rule over Britain came to an end have always been something of a puzzle to historians' (21). But he fills out the picture a little bit on p. 23:

The first decade of the fifth century, which saw the hey-day of Pelagius' influence and popularity in Rome, was marked by tremendous events in the political world, events which accelerated the disintegration of Roman authority in the West. Alaric and his Visigoths entered Italy in 402: in the last days of 406 vast hordes of barbarians, Vandlas, Alans, and Sueves, crossed the frozen Rhine and penetrated deeply into the Empire from which, in fact, they were never ejected again: almost at the same time came the revolt of Constantine III in Britain, which was quickly followed by the removal of the Roman armies and the ejection of the civil administration from this country: in 408 came the death of Stilicho, the last of Honorius' generals to continue the policy of the great Theodosius in dealing with barbarian penetration of the Empire: and in 410 Alaric sacked Rome and the government of Honorius officially acknowledged its inability to restore its authority in Britain. From that time, as Procopius puts it, the Romans never recovered Britain, which continued to be ruled by tyrants.

Zosimus, in Book 6 of his Historia Nova (translation here) comments on the period and the revolt of Constantine:

Constans was afterwards a second time sent into Spain, and took with him Justus as his general. Gerontius being dissatisfied at this, and having conciliated the favour of the soldiers in that quarter, incited the barbarians who were in Gallia Celtica to revolt against Constantine. Constantine being unable to withstand these, the greater part of his army being in Spain, the barbarians beyond the Rhine made such unbounded incursions over every province, as to reduce not only the Britons, but some of the Celtic nations also to the necessity of revolting from the empire, and living no longer under the Roman laws but as they themselves pleased. The Britons therefore took up arms, and incurred many dangerous enterprises for their own protection, until they had freed their cities from the barbarians who besieged them. In a |175 similiar manner, the whole of Armorica, with other provinces of Gaul, delivered themselves by the same means ; expelling the Roman magistrates or officers, and erecting a government, such as they pleased, of their own.

Thus happened this revolt or defection of Britain and the Celtic nations, when Constantine usurped the empire, by whose negligent government the barbarians were emboldened to commit such devastations.

Finally, for a some more general background on the upheavals occurring around 410, we can go to P. Brown's biography of Augustine (rev. ed., pp. 288-9):

Augustine was a bishop. His contact with the outside world was through pious Christians. He wished to 'weep with those who weep'; and he was genuinely annoyed that the Italian bishops had not troubled to inform him of the extent of the disaster. As an African bishop, however, he was himself fully preoccupied by events nearer home. The authorities in Carthage panicked at this time: to allay discontent they issued a hasty edict of toleration for the Donatists. This action dominated Augustine's life at the time of the sack of Rome. He was faced with a crisis of authority in his own town. Donatist violence had been renewed, and with it, a revival of religious 'segregation' among the Catholics: his own congregation had begun to ostracize Donatist converts. Augustine was partly responsible for this bad atmosphere. He had been constantly absent: he was still in Carthage on September 8th, 410, receiving urgent letters to return to Hippo. On his return, he was faced with far more pressing problems than the news of the distant sack of Rome: a converted Donatist had lapsed through being cold-shouldered by the Catholics. This is what really moved him: 'At that news, I tell you, brethren, my heart was broken: yes, my heart was broken.'

As a bishop, he had looked to Ravenna, where the Catholic Emperors issued the laws that protected his church, not to Rome. Thus, while Britain became independent, and Gaul fell to usurpers, Augustine and his colleagues remained loyal to the existing Emperor--Honorius. The father of this 'pale flower of the women's quarters', Theodosius the Great, will be presented as a model Christian prince in the City of God. There were good reasons for such a superficial panegyric: a law reaffirming all previous legislation suppressing non-Catholics had emerged from the chancery at Ravenna at almost exactly the same time as the Goths entered Rome.

Allusion in the Modern Novel

I was reading Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead tonight, and in one passage the narrator describes himself and a friend as boys spending large parts of the summer walking around on stilts. At one point, he says (p. 38), 'Giants in the earth we were, mighty men of valor.' That sounded familiar to me as a description of the Nephilim in Genesis (6:4), so I checked some English translations. Here are a few samples (from
here):

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. (NIV)

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. (NASB)

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. (ESV)

None of these uses the translation 'giants', preserving the word 'Nephilim' instead, but I found a couple examples that do:

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. (KJV)

There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. (NKJV)

I suspect that the KJV is the source for the reference, since it seems to me to be the most popular translation for literary use (and, in fact, it was used to quote Job 1:21 on p. 30), but, just in case, there is a parallel in the Septuagint as well:

οἱ δὲ γίγαντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις καὶ μετ ἐκεῖνο ὡς ἂν εἰσεπορεύοντο οἱ υἱοὶ τοῦ θεοῦ πρὸς τὰς θυγατέρας τῶν ἀνθρώπων καὶ ἐγεννῶσαν ἑαυτοῖς ἐκεῖνοι ἦσαν οἱ γίγαντες οἱ ἀπ αἰῶνος οἱ ἄνθρωποι οἱ ὀνομαστοί

Prudentius

Recently noted in a list of research grants to faculty of Dickinson College:

Marc Mastrangelo, professor of classical studies, received a $30,000 Loeb Classical Library Foundation Research Grant to support the completion of a literary and philological commentary on the Psychomachia Prudentius. This volume is expected to help establish Prudentius as one of the most significant intellectuals and artists of Late Antiquity.

As an admirer of Prudentius, I look forward to getting a look at this once it's published.

The Late Roman Military

Dennis recently mentioned the late Roman military and its capacities. Here are some citations from Michael Whitby's entry 'The Army, c. 420-602' (pp. 288ff.) in the recent volume of the Cambridge Ancient History covering 425-600. Sorry for the information dump, but perhaps some of it will prove useful for the investigation. These mostly have to do with the western half of the empire.

The year 420 marks a convenient break: between then and the Persian wars of Anastasius' reign (502-7), recorded by Procopius and Joshua the Stylite, there is little reliable narrative of Roman military action, and no Notitia....During these years the western Roman army ceased to exist as a state institution, being superseded by the military forces of the successor kingdoms in Gaul, Spain, Africa and finally Italy, none of which maintained a standing army. (288)

[T]here was a still smaller, but significant, group of comitatenses in Africa commanded by a comes, although comparable units in Spain, Britain and the western Balkans had probably ceased to exist by 420. (289)

Both methods of requiring non-Roman soldiers [i.e., volunteers and those who 'accepted military obligation as part of their peace settlement'--ed.] continued in operation, but the most prominent way of employing tribesmen during the fifth century was as federate units. These functioned as ethnic contingents under the leadership of their own chief--basically a tribal, or quasi-tribal, war-band which might vary in size from a few hundred to the 10,000 or so controlled by each of the Theoderics in the Balkans in the 470s. The commander received a Roman title--magister militum for the powerful and successful, with the consulship as the ultimate accolade--and this gave the tribesmen access to Roman salaries and provisions....Roman reliance on federates, however, had disadvantages in that the mechanics of the agreements served to increase the independent power of non-Roman leaders: their strength as patrons grew through disbursement of Roman resources, while they remained outside the institutional structures and discipline of the state army. In the west in the fifth century independent action by federates on various occasions contributed significantly to the collapse of central authority. (290-1)

Overall, supplying the army, and especially an army on campaign, represented by far the largest, costliest and most complex single element in the administration of the empire, and so would be the first to falter at times of crisis or dislocation. (292)

The administrative problem is expounded in a Novel of Valentinian III in late 444: the empire desperately needed an army, but this required regular supplies which could not be squeezed from the western economy--the serene mind of the emperor was in turmoil over the remedy required by the crises. The western emperor no longer commanded a mobile army. (296)

[On the loss of resources] The result of this process was that by the 440s only Italy and southern Gaul were under imperial control, and even in these areas it was difficult to exploit human or economic resources without the consent of local elites. A military challenge could be met only by the construction of a coalition of local interest groups--for example, the alliance of Gallic military resources, tribal as well as Gallo-Roman, brought together by Aetius to oppose the common challenge of Atilla's Hunds, or on a smaller scale the grouping organized by Anthemius to fight the Visigoths under Euric....Outside Italy, however, local aristocrats, including in some cases bishops, could organize armed forces, such as Ecdicius, the brother-in-law of Sidonius Apollinaris, in the Auvergne, Syagarius at Soissons, or the elite of Saragossa in Spain, but their range of action was limited: it was not that all western Romans had lost the ability or will to fight, but that the state could not deploy this military potential, since the complex system for raising, paying, supplying and moving armies no longer functioned. (297)

The army of Italy was composed largely of non-Roman federal units, off-shoots from the tribal groups dominant in Gaul and Spain or elements who preferred imperial money to Hunnic dominion on the Danube. These troops, like the armies of the emerging post-Roman tribal kingdoms, wanted the stability that only land ownership could afford in times of financial shortage. When their demands were refused in 476 by the patrician Orestes, father of the emperor Romulus Augustulus, they disposed of the last western emperor and elected as king the Scirian officer Odoacer. (298)

In the west the empire's military institutions failed to survive the tribal challenge. Distinctions between limitanei and comitatenses became irrelevant when frontier conditions prevailed throughout all provinces; the authority of the centre evaporated together with its ability to provide pay and organize supplies, while military force was provided either by the tribal war-bands whose federate status became increasingly nominal or by local leaders with the capacity to marshal the military potential of their particular region. (299)

Review: Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum

James Davidson's review in the London Review of Books also covers Robert Parker's Polytheism and Society at Athens, but I wager there will be more interest in TCRA as a potential research tool with broad appeal.

After seven paragraphs of bewildering, contradictory, and fascinating snippets of various cult practices throughout the ancient mediterranean, Davidson has this to say:

Never easy to make sense of, the religion of the Greeks and Romans has just become infinitely more difficult, thanks to the publication of five volumes (plus index) of the Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum, which aims ‘to present scholars with a comprehensive account of all substantial aspects of Greek, Roman and Etruscan religion’, and thereby to overwhelm any attempt at general theory by providing masses of exceptions to the rule. It is the follow-up project of the team that brought us the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, an 18-volume catalogue – each volume in itself capable of provoking a lawsuit if it slipped your grip, as well it might, and fell onto the head of a bottom-shelf browser – of all known images of figures from ancient Greek, Roman and Etruscan mythology/religion.

Thanks be to research libraries. And all seems very promising.

LIMC was always a valued asset in my early graduate career and I soon learned that the bibliography for mythical subjects nearly always outdid the OCD, was more current than the RE, and often surpassed even the Neue Pauly.

And yet Davidson is disappointed in that this follow-up project became too ambitious, divided among a massive committee of experts, and only shows occasional brilliance and comprehensiveness on individual topics:

Organisationally, however, it is a mess, a lesson in how an ambitious international grand projet, supported with oodles of money, eons of scholar-hours and lashings of good will, and concealing within the innumerable nooks of its labyrinthine structure plenty of astute commentary and the occasional mind-blowing map, can nevertheless be a huge disappointment.

You should, of course, read his review for yourself. I haven't given you the smallest fraction, such as the shocking omissions he outlines.

Parker fares much better though Davidson is dubious on many points. Still, he calls it 'one of the best books I have read on ancient religion and one of the most useful.'

Age of Bronze

Here's an article about the ongoing comic adaptation of the legend of the Trojan War, Age of Bronze.

I bought the first volume of collected stories around the time I had first begun to study the classics and when I was still an aspiring comic book artist. Back then college was just a stepping stone to becoming a better artist and storyteller.

The funny thing is that after all this time I have yet to read Age of Bronze. It sits in a box amidst my neglected collection. I've toyed with drawing comics of my own for my classes in the coming school year. In the meantime maybe I'll hunt up that copy of Age of Bronze 1 in my parents' basement, though I'm not encouraged by drivel like this:

There are also specific relationships that can be drawn between the dynamics of the Achaeans and Trojans at war and the US government and the current wars it's running. Both the bare facts of history and the underlying truth of fiction have a lot of wisdom and guidance that many seem inexplicably blind to. Tragedy is thrilling and cleansing in fiction. It ain't so pleasant to actually live through.

This, too, takes me back to those early undergraduate days.

Heath contra Feeney

One of the things I look forward to most in the BMCR are the responses. There have been some famous fights in the past, one of my favorites centering around M.L. West and the Parry-Lord thesis. This one is not as sexy, but worthy of note.

Casper C. de Jonge of Leiden, reviewing Oxford Readings in Ancient Literary Criticism (ed. Andrew Laird) said the following about one contribution:

The usefulness of ancient criticism for modern research is in fact the subject of the final contribution in the volume, Denis Feeney's polemical essay "Criticism Ancient and Modern". The author disagrees with Malcolm Heath, who has famously claimed that ancient literary criticism is the only tool that a modern scholar is allowed to use.5 Feeney argues that, although ancient critics can be useful guides, they will never be our only "interpretative key" (p. 442).

The footnote there (5) broadly cites two works by Heath, The Poetics of Greek Tragedy (1987), and Unity in Greek Poetics (1989), which in itself proves no direct familiarity with the text. Not having access these works (which, incidentally, did not fare well under review by Stephen Halliwell elsewhere), I can not support either Feeney or Heath. But Heath has words of his own:

Since I have no wish to bask in unearned fame, I must point out that I have never made the mind-bogglingly stupid claim which de Jonge (following Feeney) attributes to me. I have claimed, subject to various qualifications, that ancient literary criticism is an indispensable tool.

A concise explanation of my thoughts on this issue (including a response to Feeney's critique) can be found in chapter 4 of my Interpreting Classical Texts (London: Duckworth, 2002).

If history is any indication we'll hear more in the weeks to come.

'Bebop with Aesop'

Canterbury Woods Elementary School's Summer Institute for the Arts performs masked drama:

In the school gym, students wearing animal masks rehearsed for a half-hour performance of the musical play "Bebop with Aesop" by playwrights Michael and Jill Gallina and based on Aesop's fables.

The Last Legion

There's a movie poster available for the upcoming film adaptation of Valerio Massimo Manfredi's novel L'ultimo legione (the Last Legion):The story offers a novel (no pun intended) sequel to the mysterious fate of Romulus Augustus (often called the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire) as well as a clever origin for the Arthur legend. Romulus, who would have been about 12-13 when Odoacer forced his abdication, was lost to history. Here, he finds a sword that once belonged to Caesar and escapes to Britannia in search of the last loyal legion.

A serious question: Were there any legions to speak of in 476, and if so were there any legions in Britannia? My guess is no on both counts.

I'll be interested to see how accurately the movie plays out, taking into consideration the necessary fabrications. How consistent will it be with the world that it rewrites?

Housman and the definition of a scholar

In his Cambridge Inaugural Lecture of 1911, published under the title The Confines of Criticism, A.E. Housman was concerned primarily with two common detriments to the true work of a scholar.

To Housman 'scholar' was really a technical term for a scientist whose provenance was literature, though he defined the term in Latin as vir bonus discendi peritus (a clever twist on Cato's definition of an orator: vir bonus dicendi peritus.)*

Scholars are afflicted by the twin serpents (not Housman's image) of emotion and method.

A scholar's emotional response to literature is no more valid than anyone else's, and he runs the risk of confusing aesthetic judgment with the pursuit of truth:

That a scholar should appreciate literature is good for his own pleasure and profit; but it is none of his business to communicate that appreciation to his audience. Appreciation of literature is just as likely to be found in his audience as in him, for it has no connection with scholarship. He has no right to presume that his own aesthetic perceptions are superior to those of anyone whom he addresses, or that in this respect he is better qualified to teach them than they to teach him.

And yet it is not only that scholars promote their own appreciation of literature, but that they are expected to while their colleagues are not:

The botanist and the astronomer have for their provinces two worlds of beauty and magnificence not inferior in their way to literature; but no one expects the botanist to throw up his hands and say 'how beautiful', nor the the astronomer to fall down flat and say 'how magnificent': no one would praise their taste if they did perform these ceremonies, and no one calls them unappreciative pedants because they do not. Why should the scholar alone indulge in public ecstasy?

It is sometimes assumed that those who try to leave the 'personal voice' out of scholarship today are pedants or worse, and that they approach too closely the maligned German philologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who are sometimes trumped up in modern publications as proto-Fascist bogeymen. And yet, though he doesn't vilify them in the same way, Housman sees in these same philologists the other chief affliction, which is a kind of mechanistic adherence to methodology.

For Housman, the 'laws' of criticism are rough guidelines meant to be challenged, broken, and reformed. They are never constant. The reason, then, why so many would-be scholars treat them instead as incontrovertible rules?

'Thinking is hard,' says Goethe, 'and acting according to thought is irksome' (Denken ist schwer, nach dem Gedachten handeln unbequem).

Housman's genius for textual criticism is still recognized and the key lies in 'the application of thought to textual criticism' (the title of a later and very instructive lecture). Not emotion. Not sets of rules akin to mathematical computations. The scholar must learn what he can of the author, the subject, the era, the dialect, and all the rest, and apart from his own feelings, and unfettered by arbitrary rules, use reason to determine the soundness of the texts we've received.

Then you're free privately to appreciate the texts that a disinterested intellect has processed in the pursuit of truth. No one can deny that the texts we appreciate today have been much improved by the work of such scholars.

----
* Housman apparently took the adapted phrase from Friedrich Leo who learned it from its originator, Wilamowitz. See William M. Calder III, Vir Bonus Discendi Peritus, AJP 108.1 (1987): 168-171.

Aesop in the News

Ape research shows similarities to one of Aesop's Fables:

Orangutans are bright enough to use water as a tool, a finding that researchers say is straight out of Aesop's Fables.

Five orangutans at the Leipzig Zoo in Germany were each shown shelled peanuts. The nuts floated out of reach inside a clear 10-inch-high plastic tube quarter-filled with water.

All of the orangutans collected water from a drinker and spat it inside the tube to float the peanuts high enough to grab them, averaging three mouthfuls before success. In their first attempts, the apes on average took nine minutes before they got the nuts, but they only needed just 31 seconds by their tenth try.

The researchers had to make sure the tube was strong, "because the jaw power of orangutans is enormous," recalled Natacha Mendes, a biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. "After so much work constructing tubes, it can be heartbreaking to see it getting destroyed so easily."

The findings reminded Mendes of the fable of the thirsty crow, which threw stones into a pitcher to raise and drink the otherwise unreachable water.

Another account is here. Or here.

And Aesop is apparently still relevant to sportswriting as well:

For those struggling to understand why Brian McClennan is no longer coach of the Kiwis, consider an Aesop fable, one that may have been running around in Bluey's head.

A scorpion and a frog meet on the banks of a stream. The scorpion asks the frog to carry him to the good eating for both of them on the other side of the stream.

"But you scorpions have a death sting. How do I know you won't sting me?" the frog asks. "Because both of us would die," the scorpion responds, promising not to sting the frog.

Halfway across to land, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog asks "Why did you do that? You promised not to and now we're both going to die." The scorpion answers "I couldn't help myself - it's in my nature."

The fable provides parallels to the saga being played out between McClennan and the New Zealand Rugby League this week.

When in Rome

Constance Bodurow, an urban designer/planner, compares civic life in Rome and Detroit, which has its own Campus Martius (and, of course, one should not forget that Detroit Metro Airport is in Romulus).

Also, Timothy Farrington's review in the New York Sun of Shadow of the Silk Road, in which author Colin Thubron gives an account of his journeys on the ancient trade routes between Rome and China. The closer:

In Mr. Thubron's depiction, the Silk Road provides a cautionary tale of mutual misunderstanding. Although tightly bound by trade, he emphasizes, Rome and China were deeply ignorant of each other. Goods made their way from one terminus to the other in "an endless, complicated relay race," and so "no Romans strolled along the boulevards of Changan; no Chinese trader astonished the Palatine." In the absence of direct contact, secondhand reports blossomed into myth. The Romans believed that silk came from a pacific kingdom free from crime, while the Chinese imagined a splendid city in the west governed by philosophers. The metaphoric lesson for the present is clear, but Mr. Thubron is pessimistic: On the Mediterranean shore, his journey complete, he sees that "to the west and east the sky was not the blue calm of my imagined homecoming, but a troubled cloudscape that swept the sea in moving gleams and shadows."

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