(2008). Latin Poet‐Doctors of the Eighteenth Century: the German Lucretius (Johann Ernst Hebenstreit) Versus the Dutch Ovid (Gerard Nicolaas Heerkens) Intellectual History Review: Vol. 18, Humanism and Medicine in the Early Modern Era, pp. 91-101.

In his elegiacs Ovid did not permit the elision of the final syllable of an iambic word ‘in an arsis , i.e. first syllable of dactyl or spondee.’ See L. Müller, De re metrica, ed. 2, p. 341. These two are the only lines in which this rule is transgressed, for in Trist. II. 296, which used to appear asstat Venus Vltori iuncta, uir ante foreswas brilliantly restored conjecturally by Bentley, and has since been found to be the actual reading (...) of our best manuscript, the Marcianus. The soundness of the text in the two lines obelized above is still open to question. (shrink)

Lvcilivs, fr. 965 :quaenam uox ex te resonans meo gradu remoram facit ?Mr. Housman in the first number of the Classical Quarterly refuted and pulverized the attempt of Marx to emend this passage by writing quoia nam. ‘ Ex tecto ’ and ‘ ex aede’ have been suggested; but it is obvious that if ‘ ex aede’ is to be contemplated, emendation may go on S0009838800019431_inline1—scores of words could be found that would make sense. There is no context. If the (...) passage is to be emended at all, I suggest that Lucilius wrotequaenam uox EXTVOORERESONANS. (shrink)

Epitaphium Damonis, Milton's lament for his friend Charles Diodati, is usually described as most strongly indebted to Theocritus? idylls, to Virgil's eclogues, and to Ovid's lament for Tibullus. However, closer examination reveals that Milton was even more closely indebted to Neo-Latin poets such as Sannazaro, Buchanan, Castiglione, Mantuan, and Zanchi. Whereas there are lines in Epitaphium Damonis that resemble those in Virgil and Ovid, there are just as many that resemble those in Neo-Latin poets. Although a pastoral, the (...) tone and atmosphere of the epitaph resemble more its Renaissance contemporaries than its more distant Latin and Greek forebears. This is especially evident in the intimate tone Milton assumes in addressing Damon-Diodati and in the elaborate digression he incorporates into the poem when he confides to his dead friend his plans for a future epic on an Arthurian theme. Milton's attempt to wed a Christian sensibility to a classical form also signals his indebtedness to his Renaissance predecessors, who similarly used classical pastoral to express Christian consolation. (shrink)

The primary aim of this article is to reveal a number of previously unrecorded appearances of classical Latin poetry in the poems of Ausonius, with a brief assessment of their value in understanding his text, and an incorporation of them into the general picture of his acquaintance with his predecessors; a final section will outline some ways in which his adoptions and adaptations are used. Latin poets now fragmented or lost are not included in this study; for the (...) survival of a Lucilius or an Ennius has generally enjoyed more attention and study than the after-life of better-known authors. It is moreover doubtful if such early writers had a context to offer the borrower in Late Antiquity; while poets of the second and third centuries A.D. , who did, are poorly known today. (shrink)

In Latin America, institutionalized feminist philosophy is a recent phenomenon, dating for the most part since the 1980s. Historically, the gifted writer/philosopher/poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Mexico, Colonial Period) and the utopian socialist activist Flora Tristán (France and Peru) are especially recognized for their original feminist contributions. The Uruguayan philosopher Carlos Vaz Ferreira wrote the moderately pro‐feminist treatise Sobre feminismo in 1918, during the suffragist phase of the movement. Contemporary feminist philosophy has followed the general theoretical trends (...) established since the 1970s in Western European and Anglo‐American feminist philosophy and theory. Feminist philosophers have challenged traditional androcentric readings of the canon and have pursued alliances with colleagues in Women's Studies programs. As of the mid‐1990s, a firm tradition of feminist studies has been established in several countries. Important feminist journals and publications include Debate feminista (Mexico), Estudos feministas (Brazil), Isis Internacional (Chile), and Feminaria (Argentina); Hiparquía (Argentina) currently publishes feminist and non‐feminist articles by women philosophers. (shrink)

In a discussion of the spread of Latin in ancient Palestine it has been argued that, apart from Westerners like Jerome who settled in the province and a number of translators from Greek into Latin and from Latin into Greek, three Latin authors whose works are extant may have been, with various degrees of probability, natives of the country. These are Commodian of Gaza, arguably the earliest extant Christian Latin poet; Eutropius, the author of abreviariumof (...) Roman history, who apparently hailed from Caesarea; and the anonymous author of theDescriptio totius mundi et gentium, who certainly was a native of the Syro-Palestinian region, and conceivably of one of the Palestinian cities. Here I wish to discuss another case, which seems to me characteristic of the reluctance of scholars to admit that Latin, and Latin authors, were more prevalent in the East than is usually acknowledged. In fact, it may be not misleading to assert that the invariably adduced exceptions of Ammianus Marcellinus and Claudian as Latin writers from the East are exceptions by virtue of the quality of their work rather than by its very existence. (shrink)

The elegy flared into existence, commanded the cultural stage for several decades, then went extinct. This book accounts for the swift rise and sudden decline of a genre whose life span was incredibly brief relative to its impact. Examining every major poet from Catullus to Ovid, Subjecting Verses presents the first comprehensive history of Latin erotic elegy since Georg Luck's. Paul Allen Miller harmoniously weds close readings of the poetry with insights from theoreticians as diverse as Jameson, Foucault, Lacan, (...) and Zizek. In welcome contrast to previous, thematic studies of elegy--efforts that have become bogged down in determining whether particular themes and poets were pro- or anti-Augustan--Miller offers a new, "symptomatic" history. He asks two obvious but rarely posed questions: what historical conditions were necessary to produce elegy, and what provoked its decline? Ultimately, he argues that elegiac poetry arose from a fundamental split in the nature of subjectivity that occurred in the late first century--a split symptomatic of the historical changes taking place at the time. Subjecting Verses is a major interpretive feat whose influence will reach across classics and literary studies. Linking the rise of elegy with changes in how Romans imagined themselves within a rapidly changing society, it offers a new model of literary theory that neither reduces the poems to a reflection of their context nor examines them in a vacuum. (shrink)

In a recent article, P.G. Christiansen has strenuously questioned the communis opinio that Claudian was an immigrant from the Greek-speaking eastern Empire. Although Christiansen injects a healthy skepticism into the debate about Claudian's biography, his arguments in favor of Claudian being a native Latin speaker are flawed or unpersuasive. The only relevant external evidence indicates that in the centuries after Claudian's death he was considered an Egyptian. The evidence in Claudian's poems – the unique passing reference to Nilus noster (...) in carm. min. 19, the invocation the symbols of Egypt at the end of carm. min. 22, and Claudian's claim in carm. min. 41 that his first public Latin composition occured in 395 c.e. – suggest an eastern origin. The example of the inscription to Cronius Eusebius suggests that the bilingualism in the inscription to Claudian could point to a personal connection with Greek. Since the positive case for a western origin can be neither supported on linguistic or textual grounds, and recent research has shown that high levels of Latinity were possible for contemporary authors in the eastern Empire, the case for a western origin is decisively weaker than that supporting an origin in Egypt. (shrink)

The Latin etymological wordplay, although the object of more and more studies, has received few definitional attempts that take into account both the singularity of the ancient etymology and the playful modalities implemented by the poets. Whereas sound echoes and paronyms are the basis of certain ancient etymological connections, it is important to have a poetic approach to the process based on the allusive capacity of the origin of words, and to insist on the playful part of the process.In (...) what way is the origin of words one of the means available to Latin poets to play with the literary, philological and antiquarian knowledge of their readers? How can it enter into a process of connivance with the reader? What are the characteristic features of etymological ludism in its poetic singularities? Of Latin etymological ludism in particular, in its relationships with Greek? (shrink)

I begin by quoting from two valuable recent works on Horace. Professor Brink in his Horace on Poetry writes: ‘The centre of the short piece lies in lines 21—34. Readers, among them critics and poets, had denied one aspect of the Odes which was surely above criticism—the striking originality of these poems. Horace's defence turns on the question of originality’ and ‘Epistle 19 is unique in that it alone among the literary satires and letters reiterates Horace's claim to be the (...) Latin fidicen’ . And Dr. McGann in his Studies in Horace's First Book of Epistles : ‘In Ep. 19... as in the literary satires, Horace is a practising poet or at least a very recently practising one, engaged in defending himself against hostile criticism’ and ‘As the only epistle concerned exclusively with literary matters, the nineteenth stands apart’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Plato and the PoetsCatalin ParteniePierre Destrée and Fritz-Gregor Herrmann, editors. Plato and the Poets. Mnemosyne Supplements: Monographs on Greek and Latin Language and Literature, 328. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2011. Pp. xxii + 434. Cloth, $217.00.This beautifully produced volume is a collection of nineteen essays, half of them being initially presented as papers given at a 2006 conference in Louvain. Seven chapters focus on the Republic and address a (...) variety of issues: the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry (Glenn W. Most); Plato’s criticism of poetry and his negative attitude toward women (Penelope Murray); mimêsis as appearance-making (Gabriel Richardson); the meaning of mimêsis (Jera Marušič); Plato’s criticism and appreciation of poetry (Stephen Halliwell); thumos and the criticism of poetry (Pierre Destrée); painting, poetry, and the cognitive division of the soul (Rachel Singpurwalla). One chapter deals with myth, invented story, and true account in the Timaeus (Gretchen Reydams-Schils). Two are devoted to the Laws—mimetic correctness and choric poetry (Antony Hatzistavrou), and tragedy and philosophy (Susan Sauvé Meyer). The remaining nine chapters deal with other dialogues, although they are often discussed in connection with the Republic; the topics they discuss include: theia moira, enthousiasmos, and mimêsis in Gorgias (Fritz-Gregor Herrmann); divine possession, inspiration, and mimêsis in Ion and Republic (with references to Plato’s entire corpus, Catherine Collobert); the poet and the rhapsode as hermêneus in Ion (Carlotta Capuccino); the poet, the mad lover, and the mad philosopher as the true interpreter in Ion and Phaedrus (Francisco Gonzalez); inspiration and Plato’s psychology in Ion, Phaedrus, Politicus, Philebus, Timaeus (Stefan Büttner); theia moira in Ion and Meno, and the poets’ incomplete ascension in Symposium (Dominic Scott); Plato’s use of poetry and poets in Symposium (Elizabeth Bel-fiore); poetry and image-making in Republic and Sophist (Noburu Notomi); and poetry, the tripartition of the soul and the Form of Beauty in Phaedrus (Elizabeth Pender).As Stephen Halliwell put it in his essay, there is the seemingly Platonic attitude “which criticizes, censors and even ‘banishes’ poets, and which speaks in terms of unmasking the false pretensions and the damaging influence of poetry. But there is also the Platonic stance which never ceases to allow the voices of poetry to be heard in Plato’s own writing, which presupposes not only extensive knowledge but also ‘love’ of poetry on the part of Plato’s readers, and which at certain key junctures claims for itself nothing less than the status of a new kind of philosophical poetry and art: the status, indeed, of ‘the greatest music’ [Phaedo 61a; cf. Phaedrus 248d, 259b] and even of ‘the finest and best tragedy’ [Laws 817b]” (241). All the contributors address, in one way or another, the puzzling contrast between these two views on poetry. Halliwell, for instance, claims that Book X of the Republic “offers not a simple repudiation of the best poets but a complicated counterpoint in which resistance and attraction to their work are intertwined, a counterpoint which (among other things) explores the problem of whether, and in what sense, it might be possible to be a ‘philosophical lover’ of poetry” (244). While Most argues that “there is little or no evidence for any consciousness” of a generic opposition between philosophy and poetry tout court before Plato, “this opposition may even be in the process of being constructed” in his Republic (19) (Notomi, too, discusses this topic, and refers to the view according to which the “ancient quarrel” was Plato’s invention). [End Page 291]In reading the nineteen essays of this volume, one realizes that in Plato there is not just one poetics, or two contrasting views on poetry, but—as the editors put it—“several models of what poetry is and what the poets do” (xxii). One would have liked that these several models be explicitly discussed in a concluding chapter. The editors, however, acknowledge that neither they nor their authors aimed at achieving a unified vision of the subject: “While certain recurring themes crystallize themselves with increasing complexity in the course of the various discussions, there remain both contradictions and incompatibilities between results... (shrink)

The Greek priests were concerned with ritual alone, and rarely, if ever, assumed the office of moralist; the philosophers, such as Parmenides and Empedocles ...

The poets and prose-writers of Greece and Rome were acutely conscious of their literary heritage. They expressed this consciousness in the regularity with which, in their writings, they imitated and alluded to the great authors who had preceded them. Such imitation was generally not regarded as plagiarism but as essential to the creation of a new literary work: imitating one's predecessors was in no way incompatible with originality or progress. These views were not peculiar to the writers of Greece and (...) Rome but were adopted by many others who have written in the 'classical tradition' right up to modern times. Creative Imitation and Latin Literature is an exploration of this concept of imitation. The contributors analyse selected passages from various authors - Greek, Latin and English - in order to demonstrate how Latin authors created new works of art by imitating earlier passages of literature. (shrink)

Seven mentions of Homer, Homeric characters or passages are contained in Fronto’s De orationibus and his five letters known as De eloquentia. Although these references might seem surprising in rhetorical texts, they form in fact a rather coherent corpus which features the famous epic poet in a singular fashion. His poems are however neither quoted nor commented upon at length. On the contrary the references are closely related to Fronto’s aims and thoughts and the poet as represented is different from (...) both the actual and the traditional Homer. He is deprived of his own characteristics and becomes a rhetor and one of the most important orators. He is thus to be considered and followed by someone trying to define which is the best oratorical style in general and the best type of eloquence for an emperor in particular. Even if this sort of metamorphosis is not without precedent in Latin literature and oratory, the Frontonian Homer, whose perfect style is a model of purity and naturalness, is a new Homer reflecting a second-century rhetorician’s thinking. (shrink)

For the senseless inira some manuscripts have inire or in arva, and the latter stands in the text of Baehrens . The attempts at emendation may be divided into two groups, those altering only inira and those tampering with ibat as well. I pass over the latter group, as Robinson Ellis, in his commentary, p. 125, has defended ibat sufficiently by reference to the frequent ñει in Babrius, Avianus’ model. The former group is represented by Withof and Robinson Ellis himself (...) ; and the editors of the Loeb text of the Minor Latin Poets, in 1934, had the verse printed with this in ora. Nobody seems to have seen that the verse-maker had to express the idea of the panther's pride. Therefore I propose ibat in (astra, a metaphorical phrase for the animal's conceit. For this metaphor cf. Horace's famous feriam sidera, for ibat Virg. Aen. 9. 641 sic itur ad astra, for in astra at the same place of the pentameter after a verb of motion Prop. 3. 18, 34 cessit in astra; Ov. Fast. 2. 478 and 3. 186 venit in astra. Avianus himself has this in astra before the last word of the pentameter in two more passages, 15. 8,19. 6. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 121.2 (2000) 299-307 [Access article in PDF] Brief Mention Translation, the Profession, and the Poets Peter Burian Amidst all the questions being raised these days about the health of classical studies in this country, one fact is undisputed: there is an enormous amount of translation going on. Much of it is good, and some of it sells extraordinarily well. Still, none of this is guaranteed (...) to make classicists happy, and for more than one reason. Some may be inclined to contrast the proliferation of translations with falling enrollments in language courses and to regard the emphasis on translation as misplaced or even as a sign of how far knowledge of Greek and Latin has declined. Others no doubt continue to feel that translation is a second-rate activity and somehow unworthy of the attention of serious scholars.The traditions of our discipline seem to have encouraged this disdain: translation is treated in our pedagogical practice as the most elementary stage of understanding a text. There is thus a somewhat shameful association of translation with trot. Translations are what we were constantly required to make and forbidden to use when we studied Latin and Greek, and they are what most of us still require our students to make and forbid them to use. But if the writing of translations is not very highly regarded within the profession, we reserve particular scorn for translations done by those who are not members of our guild. Conditioned as we are to value fidelity to the letter above all else, we may actually find ourselves professing admiration for the sort of musty and flaccid writing that seems to guarantee "accuracy" at the expense of style.Fortunately, despite such perhaps unconscious biases, translation of the classics is flourishing. For this we can thank, in the first instance, an active and able group of dedicated writers within and without the field who have made translating from Greek and Latin central to their creative lives. And we should acknowledge that--to borrow a phrase [End Page 299] from the great rogue translator Ezra Pound--"the thought of what America would be like if the classics had a wide circulation" is only thinkable about the classics in translation. Less than half a century ago, Bernard Knox still felt it necessary to begin the preface to his Oedipus at Thebes (1957) with the disarming notice that his book was intended not only for the classical scholar but also for "the 'Greekless reader,' a category which, once treated with scorn by the professors of more educated ages, now includes the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the planet." Truth to tell, of course, the overwhelming majority of humankind never knew Greek, or for that matter Latin, but the number--or at least the proportion--of those who do has certainly shrunk. Professorial scorn is no longer an option. Translation is our lifeline, and great literatures need great translations.In what follows, I simply raise a few questions about the translation of literary texts and its role in our profession and, in the process, mention (purely by way of example) a number of the recent American translations from Greek and Latin that I have found particularly useful, satisfying, and/or provocative.First, what is the right way to approach the translation of an ancient, canonical text? My answer is simply that there is no one right way. We must understand that different translations serve different purposes and need to be judged by different criteria. The first, or only readily available, translation into English of a little-known work is likely to have a different purpose from the retranslation of a text that has appeared in English many times, perhaps over many centuries; and the translators are likely to feel different obligations to the works and to their prospective readers. A "literal" version done properly remains one of the most useful contributions a classicist can make. Such recent additions to the Loeb Library as William Race's Pindar (1997) and the ongoing Aristophanes of Jeffrey Henderson (1998-) and Euripides of David Kovacs (1994... (shrink)

We know of several Greek translators of works originally written in Latin. Of non-Christian, purely literary material, we know of six. First, there is Claudius' powerful freedman, Polybius, who turned Homer into Latin prose and Vergil into Greek prose. Then, under Hadrian we have Zenobius ‘the sophist’, who translates Sallust'sHistoriesand “so-called Wars’. The translation into Greek of Hyginus' Fabulae can be dated precisely, for its unknown author tells us that he copied it up on 11th September 207. Similarly, (...) the extant translation of Eutropius'Breviariumby Paianios, probably a pupil of Libanius, can be dated securely to about 380. The translation of the same by Capito, which survives in excerpts, is placed with some confidence at the beginning of the sixth century. The date and identity of the last of our translators, ‘Arrian the epic poet’, who rendered theGeorgicsof Vergil, is unclear. (shrink)