The siren call of individualism is compelling. And although we have recognized its dangerous allure in the realm of adult decision-making, it has had profound and yet unnoticed dangerous effects in pediatric decision-making as well. Liberal individualism as instantiated in the best interest standard conceptualizes the child as independent and unencumbered and the goal of child rearing as rational autonomous adulthood, a characterization that is both ontologically false and normatively dangerous. Although a notion of the individuated child might have a (...) place in establishing a threshold of care obligated and enforced by the state, beyond this context we should turn our attention more explicitly to the relational interests of children. (shrink)

Problems of the relationship between man and nature are becoming a steadily increasing portion of the questions facing modern civilization. Moreover, their character is changing significantly. Only two or three decades ago, the most acute problems were an unending list of "shortages" of one type or another, while the environment in which men lived was regarded primarily as a set of resources without which things could not be produced. Today it is the threat of excessive human influences on nature that (...) has taken center stage. The biosphere is beginning to be perceived on the level of its capacity to assimilate what has been produced, and the growing question is how best to combine the scientific-technological creations of man with the objective processes occurring in nature. (shrink)

In 394 most editors of the Knights read, cited uniquely from this passage in the lexica, in the sense ‘dry up, parch’, referring, for the condition and appearance of the prisoners after long captivity and privations, to Nub. 186, where the allusion is to the squalor and emaciation of the Socratics. Now Aristophanes' skill in maintaining allusively an image, once a keyword has been supplied, makes me wonder how line 394 was intended to complete the metaphor of the harvest and (...) the crop in 392–3. (shrink)

The study of syntax is fundamental to linguistics and language study, but it is often taught solely within the framework of transformational grammar. This book is unique in several respects: it introduces the basic concepts used in the description of syntax, independently of any single model of grammar. Most grammatical models fail to deal adequately with one aspect of syntax or another, and the authors argue that an understanding of the concepts used in any full description of language is crucial (...) for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of formal grammars. Formal approaches to some of these concepts are critically examined. This book will train students, of either linguistics or language, to understand and make the best use of any grammar they encounter. Secondly, the book deals with the whole of syntax from immediate constituents and relations between sentences. It also examines concepts like subject and object, agent and patient, topic, comment and theme. Thirdly, there is a section on morphology, and a discussion of the relationship between syntax and morphology. As a book which explains, in a lucid and approachable way, why linguists have adopted certain solutions to problems and not others, this will be an invaluable introductory text. It is profusely illustrated with diagrams, and there are sets of exercises for every chapter which can be used in class, or by students working independently. This second edition has been extensively revised to take account of recent developments in syntactic studies. (shrink)

This second visit to the place of Virgil's birth was made partly in actuality—for my wife and I, before taking part in the Virgilian Cruise of last summer, spent two delightful days at Pietole with our hosts, the Signori Prati, and our guest and friend Bruno Nardi—and partly in a renewed pondering of the arguments presented by my friend Professor Conway both in his earlier article and in his recent review of the question, to which, as he says, I had (...) urged him to return. I promised him at the time that if he should not speak the last word on the subject, I would still further defend the view commonly accepted until he bestowed an extraordinary publicity on Calvisano and Carpenedolo. He declares that I maintain the traditional site at Pietole, ‘though not perhaps with very great confidence.’ He further implies that I ‘do not want to accept the evidence of Probus because “I prefer” to believe a mediaeval tradition.’ Let me assure him and the reader that I do not regard a mediaeval tradition per se as better proof than the certain statement of an ancient authority. I have been led, by studies in various fields, to respect tradition in general until it is disproved, and to lay the burden of the argument on those who would disprove it. But the mere sight of something hoary and mediaeval does not prompt me to exclaim, ‘Media Aetas locuta est; causa finita est’ I relish the attempts of an iconoclast to destroy rigid error, and accept his destruction if it is accomplished. In the present case, however, I have ‘very great confidence’ that Conway's assault on the tradition has come to naught. Possibly some new and unexpected evidence may yet be discovered, showing that Virgil was born at Calvisano, or Carpenedolo, or at some other site than Pietole—but nobody has presented it yet. (shrink)

In addition to the technical writers on music, a number of ancient authors, notably Plutarch and Athenaeus, have recorded several musical terms, either by way of illustrative material—Plutarch is particularly given to musical similes and metaphors—or in the course of anecdotes about music and musicians. As musical terminology in different ages contains words or phrases not only of general acceptance and familiarity, but other more ephemeral expressions which belong to the jargon of a narrower circle of executants and critics, it (...) is possible that the musical significance of such words, when used in an apparently non-musical context, has escaped notice. (shrink)

Both the meaning of and the identity of the are in some doubt here. Gow's view that ‘Lacon thinks of labourers and cicadas vying with one another in the heat’ and that means ‘provoke to further exertions, put him on his mettle’ agrees in general with the scholiast.

In Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society N.S. 14, 68, D. C. C. Young drew attention to a curious variant in the text of Longus 2.2.1, where, in a description of how, at the vintage, women ‘eyed’ Daphnis, A has concluding that ‘brothers’ must be a colloquial expression for ‘eyes’, he was however unable to cite any other example of this usage, but compared ‘picked men’, in Paulus Silentiarius, a locution found in a small range of other authors, as well (...) as ‘comrades on the flank, bystanders’ ‘twins’ = testicles, and French jumelles - binoculars. (shrink)

In a recent article Mr. D. A. West investigated the meaning of haurire, haustus, showing how the primary sense ‘to take by scooping, to draw’ is present in a number of passages which have been incorrectly interpreted in the light of extensions made only later of this usage. He noted in passing that ‘this sense may well survive in, the cognate of haurire’. In this article I hope to show that the recognition of this as the basic sense of and (...) its cognates and compounds helps to clear away a number of errors arising from the misunderstanding of the fact that the action of scooping, or drawing, is at the root of Gk., as of Lat. haurire. (shrink)

Aelivs donatvs, the note d grammarian of the fourth century of our era, wrote commentaries on Terence and Virgil. The commentary on Terence has been preserved, though in a curiously heterogeneous form which thus far has defied analysis. The most plausible supposition is that our present text is a conflation of two commentaries, one by Donatus himself, and one by Euanthius, whose work was obviously utilized for part of the introductory note on comedy. But even if this is the right (...) statement of the question, the question remains to be solved. The problem of the commentary on Virgil is, unfortunately, more simple, or at least is universally adjudged more simple. We have extant Donatus's life of Virgil, his dedicatory letter to Lucius Munatius, and his introductory remarks on Bucolic poetry. The commentary itself, save for scattered references in later grammarians, glossaries, and commentaries, has been lost. (shrink)