Excitement struggles with the restraint of form and language and the artifice of verbal repetition… runs riot.’ The repetition is more pronounced and personal here than in another Lesbia epigram, no. 70, where ‘the repetition dicit…dicit makes it certain that Catullus had [Callimachus, Ep. 25 Pf.] in mind’. Poem 70 illustrates how Catullus might allude to and adapt a Hellenistic model in expressing his personal feelings; while the longer elegiac poems in particular show the depth of his engagement with Callimachean (...) literary technique. We should not be surprised to find Callimachean elements here too, given the demonstrable correspondences with poem 68 in particular, a composition noted for its use of Alexandrian artifice. But while there are close echoes of the high emotion, the doctus poeta of 68 seems to be largely missing from 107. Here Catullus exults ipsa refers te / nobis ; there his mistress se nostrum contulit in gremium. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ad UnguemArmand J. D'Angour vos, oPompilius sanguis, carmen reprehendite, quod nonmulta dies et multa litura coercuit atquepraesectum deciens non castigavit ad unguem.(Horace Ars Poetica 291–94) You, OSons of Pompilius, condemn that poem whichmany a day and many an erasure has not pruned andwhittled down and chastened tenfold to the nail."Censure a poem," Brink paraphrases, "which has not been reduced to right proportions and (when it has been reduced) has (...) not been tested to a nicety."1 Tested, that is, by its author, whose action Horace has been thought here to be likening to the way a sculptor examines a completed work for flaws. Translations of the final line commonly expand the phrase ad unguem to specify such a connotation, often taking praesectum to qualify unguem as in "to meet the test of the well–pared nail."2 But Brink has advanced convincing arguments against the supposition that praesectum qualifies unguem.3 Moreover, praesectum is positioned for emphasis and followed directly by deciens: the words must elaborate the process described by the foregoing coercuit.4Praesectum [End Page 411] thus picks up carmen, and no reference to the artisan's manicure should be supposed.5Ad unguem remains as a self–contained expression, to be understood in its own right.The image introduced in the following lines has been thought to present a deliberate point of contrast in the matter of the sculptor's fingernails:ingenium misera quia fortunatius artecredit et excludit sanos Helicone poetasDemocritus, bona pars non ungues ponere curat,non barbam, secreta petit loca, balnea vitat.(AP 295–98)Because Democritus believes that it's luckier to possess talentthan mere skill, and denies a place on Helicon to sane poets,a good number of artists make a point of not cutting their nailsor trimming their beards, but head for secret haunts and avoid baths.Despite the verbal echo, the change of tone and context at this point rules out any straightforward association of the unguem in line 294 with the ungues in line 297.6 Horace's humorous sketch of those "artistic types" who model their insalubrious habits on a superficial view of Democritean inspiration initiates a new section of the poem.7 It looks forward to a fuller consideration of the relative value of ars and ingenium, about which in due course Horace gives his opinion as follows:natura fieret laudabile carmen an artequaesitum est. ego nec studium sine divite venanec rude quid possit video ingenium; alterius sicaltera poscit opem res et coniurat amice.(AP 408–11) [End Page 412]The question is: Is good poetry due to nature or art?I myself fail to see what artistry can achieve without a rich vein of natural ability,or raw talent without application, to such a degree does the one attributedraw upon the other and make common cause with it.The only other instance of ad unguem in Horace is in Satires 1.5, where the phrase similarly appears tout court, conjoined to a past participle in a construction which parallels praesectum... ad unguem as construed above: interea Maecenas advenit atqueCocceius Capitoque simul Fonteius, ad unguemfactus homo, Antoni non ut magis alter amicus.(Sat. 1.5.31–33) Meanwhile Maecenas arrives andCocceius, and with them Fonteius Capito, a manof such consummate charm that Antony holds none dearer.Whether ad unguem here refers to physical or intellectual refinement (or both), the connotation "to perfection" is evident. Commentators ancient and modern have generally supposed that the metaphor is best explained by the image which Persius, writing around a century later, developed in his First Satire:quis populi sermo est? quis enim, nisi carmina mollinunc demum numero fluere, ut per leve severoseffundat iunctura ungues?(Sat. 1.63–65)"What's the word from the general public? "What else, but thatnow at last there are verses so fluent that no join jars criticalfingernails as they glide across the smooth surface.In commenting on AP 294, Ps.–Acro adduced this precisely evocative idea of "critical fingernails" for Horace's use of ad unguem:"ad unguem": tractum a... (shrink)

Background: The factors influencing parents’ willingness to enroll their children in biobanks are poorly understood. This study sought to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children, and their perceived benefits, concerns, and information needs under different consent and data-sharing scenarios, and to identify factors associated with willingness. Methods: This large, experimental survey of patients at the 11 eMERGE Network sites used a disproportionate stratified sampling scheme to enrich the sample with historically underrepresented groups. Participants were randomized to receive one of (...) three consent and data-sharing scenarios. Results: In total, 90,000 surveys were mailed and 13,000 individuals responded (15.8% response rate). 5737 respondents were parents of minor children. Overall, 55% (95% confidence interval 50–59%) of parents were willing to enroll their youngest minor child in a hypothetical biobank; willingness did not differ between consent and data-sharing scenarios. Lower educational attainment, higher religiosity, lower trust, worries about privacy, and attitudes about benefits, concerns, and information needs were independently associated with less willingness to allow their child to participate. Of parents who were willing to participate themselves, 25% were not willing to allow their child to participate. Being willing to participate but not willing to allow one’s child to participate was independently associated with multiple factors, including race, lower educational attainment, lower annual household income, public health care insurance, and higher religiosity. Conclusions: Fifty-five percent of parents were willing to allow their youngest minor child to participate in a hypothetical biobank. Building trust, protecting privacy, and addressing attitudes may increase enrollment and diversity in pediatric biobanks. (shrink)

This is the introduction to the Ashgate volume on Rawls in their history of political thought series. It puts Rawls's life and work in context and then discusses the essays included in the volume, essays of high quality likely to shape scholarship on Rawls for the coming decades.

The book is comprised of essays that utilize Shakespeare as a productive window into topics of contemporary social and political relevance. Its interdisciplinary qualities make the book relevant for students of political studies, literature, philosophy, cultural studies, and history.

Eighteenth-century England saw the rise of a "peculiarly English" art form—landscape gardening—and a corresponding change in attitudes toward the antural world. While the French, who lived under tyranny, had a tightly organized, restrictive gardens, the "free" English enjoyed gardens where they were at liberty to wander. John Dixon Hunt examines eighteenth-century letters, literary and critical works, biographies, paintings, prints, and drawings to trace the gradual movement from formal regularity toward a carefully calculated naturalness.

M. Marouzeau has re-directed attention to the peculiarity of Terentian versification by which a monosyllabic word is put at the end of the line, though it belongs, in point of sense, to the beginning of the next line. There is thus, for the copyist or ‘corrector’, a strong temptation to shift the little word to the beginning of the next line, or even to drop it altogether. Where scansion allows, the second course can be adopted without arousing any suspicions.

It is not without a certain emotion that one opens this book devoted to the memory of a great scholar of medieval thought who worked and lived in the certainty that there cannot be a conflict between the Christian faith and science. In a significant essay, Benedict M. Ashley defends the idea of the philosophy of nature as continuous or identical with natural science. Ashley does allow, however, for so many divergences between philosophy of nature and natural science due to (...) later developments in science that this identification must be qualified. Steven E. Baldner points out some of the contradictions of Hartshorne's atomism: Hartshorne denies change and real causality. Anthony J. Celano recalls that Robert Kilwardby was very much aware that happiness as described by Aristotle is quite different from the beatitude promised by the Christian faith. The order of the divine entitative attributes in the Summa theologiae I, qq. 3-11 has baffled many a commentator. Lawrence Dewan connects it with some texts of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Jeremiah Hackett studies Roger Bacon's Moralis philosophia. Dealing with Luther's attitude toward St. Thomas, Denis R. Tanz accepts Erasmus's verdict that the weight given to Thomas in theology was an important factor in propelling Luther out of the Roman Catholic orbit. This opinion, however, confounds appearances with the real reason for leaving, namely, estrangement from several central positions of Catholic doctrine. It is a tribute to the Catholicity of Thomas that after 1519 Luther came to identify the Pope, the Church and all scholastic doctors with the Thomists and said that the Church had become the synagogue of the papists and the Thomists: Thomas had been made the arbiter of heresy. Mark F. Johnson stresses the sapiential character of the sacra doctrina. Mark D. Jordan wrestles with the question why Thomas wrote his Aristotelian commentaries. Arguing in the line of Owens's interpretation he reduces their importance with regard to Thomas's own positions. Jordan seems to think that Thomas's philosophy cannot be formulated without his theology, an explanation which is hardly satisfactory. Armand Maurer submits some reflections on St. Thomas's notion of presence. The question to what extent Albert the Great contributed to Aquinas's treatises of the morality of human acts and of natural law is examined by Ernest J. McCullough. Walter H. Principe points out how, according to Aquinas, food is assimilated into the veritas humanae naturae. Eric A. Reitan retraces Weisheipl's analysis of Aristotle's Physics and of St. Thomas' Commentary: the axiom, "whatever is moved, is moved by another" can be understood only within the context of the general science of nature. In his Liber de causis et processu universitatis Albert came to hold the same position as Thomas on the demonstrability of creation and of its beginning in time. Two final articles concern the difficulties underlying Aristotle's arguments in Physics 7 and 8, and Aquinas and Newton on causality: William Wallace connects Newton's universal gravitation with the axiom that nothing acts on itself. (shrink)

Philosophers agree that scientific explanations aim to produce understanding, and that good ones succeed in this aim. But few seriously consider what understanding is, or what the cues are when we have it. If it is a psychological state or process, describing its specific nature is the job of psychological theorizing. This article examines the role of understanding in scientific explanation. It warns that the seductive, phenomenological sense of understanding is often, but mistakenly, viewed as a cue of genuine understanding. (...) The article closes with a discussion of several new paths of research that tie the psychology of scientific explanation to cognate notions of learning, testimony, and understanding. (shrink)