the Catullan Galliambic

We're reading Catullus 63 this week and I've found no work very helpful on the meter.

So here is the schema, which is really much simpler than the commentaries and metrical treatises would have you believe:



And here is the most natural form of this ionic meter followed by Catullus' most common adaptation:



The places marked here by curly brackets allow the phenomenon called anaclasis, whereby two positions of different quantity may be switched. Put simply long-short become short-long, as the schema makes clear.

You'll notice that in the first half Catullus favors anaclasis in the bracketed portion, while he favors resolution in the second. I haven't bothered to calculate percentages but I'd bet he follows this as a rule 75% of the time.

Aside from resolution and contraction (which are pretty straightforward) the only seemingly tricky thing occurs between the curly brackets. But even that isn't so tricky. There are only three options:



Galliambic meter should never cause anyone headaches again.

Now who's a metrist of some repute?

NOTES:

The symbol showing two shorts below a long indicates 'contractible biceps,' i.e. a position which is properly filled by double breve (two shorts) but which may be contracted into a single longum.

The symbol showing two shorts above a long indicates 'resolvable long,' i.e. a position which is properly filled by a single longum but which may be resolved into double breve.

The basic Ionic metron is composed of two shorts followed by two longs. The Galliambic is properly an Ionic dimeter plus an Ionic dimeter catalectic (catalexis refers to suppression of the final element at line end -- note that the second dimeter is always short one syllable).

classics from a different culture 2

see here for photos of the inscription:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

cassius hueffer

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

Cassius Hueffer

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

I Love Thucy!

Here's a brain bender for you.

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

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

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

My reading would run thus:

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

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

Does that make sense? Can anyone make better sense?

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

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

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

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

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

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

catullus as transformer/thundercat

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

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

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

the second point of interest regards latin vocabulary:

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

catappho

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

Immature poets imitate. Mature poets steal.

Is this the fate that awaits us?

Lonely Italian Pensioner Gets Adopted

Sep 26, 7:57 AM (ET)

By Antonio Denti

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And you thought we were through with provisos!

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

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

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

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

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

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

ut i got home, we made dinner

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

hey drum-major, toss me that hyper baton!

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

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

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

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

red derrick

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

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

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

relax and let the syntax bring you home

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

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

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

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

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

Pros

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

Cons

* Needless profanity and slang
* Some factual errors

Description

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

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

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

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

desine fata deum flecti sperare precando...

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

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

(via about.com).

Hendecasyllabics and the Epigrammatic Tradition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Martial knew better than we.

catullus and his world

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

don't disguise your provis(o)

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

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

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

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

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