Epistles 1.20, the last poem of its book, begins with an elaborate joke on the entry of Horace's book of epistles into the world and ends with a well-known σραγς describing the poet himself. It will be argued here that this final poem recalls and subverts the pretensions of two earlier final poems in Horace's own Odes, and that its good-humoured depreciation of Horace himself is matched by a similar attitude towards his previous grand poetic claims as a lyric vates.

In this paper, we respond to Andrew Avins's recent review of methods whose use he advocates in clinical trials, to make them more ethical. He recommends in particular, “unbalanced randomisation”. However, we argue that, before such a recommendation can be made, it is important to establish why unequal randomisation might offer ethical advantages over equal randomisation, other things being equal. It is important to make a pragmatic distinction between trials of treatments that are already routinely available and trials of restricted (...) treatments. We conclude that unequal randomisation could, indeed, be an ethical compromise between protecting the interests of participants and those of society. (shrink)

Two rotational bands have been identified and characterized in the proton-magic N = Z + 1 nucleus Ni-57. These bands complete the systematics of well-and superdeformed rotational bands in the light nickel isotopes starting from doubly magic Ni-56 to Ni-60. High-spin states in Ni-57 have been produced in the fusion-evaporation reaction Si-28(S-32, 2p1n)Ni-57 and studied with the gamma-ray detection array GAMMASPHERE operated in conjunction with detectors for evaporated light charged particles and neutrons. The features of the rotational bands in Ni-57 (...) are compared to those of neighbouring isotopes and interpreted by means of configuration-dependent cranked Nilsson-Strutinsky calculations. The two observed high-spin bands are considered signature partners and assigned to configurations with one 1g(9/2) proton and one 1g(9/2) neutron, resulting in an unambiguous understanding of the energetically favoured signature alpha = -1/2 band but a somewhat less satisfactory description of the signature alpha = +1/2 band. (shrink)

One method for investigating the neurobiology of consciousness is to experimentally manipulate consciousness as a variable and then visualize the resultant functional brain changes with advanced imaging techniques. To begin investigation into this area, healthy volunteers underwent positron emission tomography scanning while listening to randomized word lists in both conscious and unconscious conditions. Following anaesthesia, subjects had no explicit memories. Nonetheless, subjects demonstrated implicit memory on a forced-choice test . These subsequent memory scores were correlated with regional brain metabolism measured (...) during encoding. Conscious recall and unconscious recognition memory demonstrated considerable anatomic overlap in correlating significantly with relative glucose metabolism in auditory verbal memory areas. However, only conscious recall correlated with mediodorsal thalamic nucleus activity; unconscious recognition memory did not. These findings suggest that conscious versus unconscious memory distinctions may depend on the presence or absence of correlated thalamic activity, and directly implicate the thalamus in the neurobiology of consciousness. (shrink)

I offer some notes on the text of Propertius. In the apparatus to individual passages Ω is employed to indicate the archetype, i.e. the consensus of N and A. Only two quires of A are extant, and after 2. 1. 63 its place is taken by descendants: F, L and P. These derive more immediately from a manuscript of Petrarch , copied from A in the Sorbonne in 1333, and now lost. The delta mss. I discard; they are too interpolated (...) and contaminated to aid in the reconstruction of Π. They may contain some elements of truth independent of N and A/Π, but J. L. P. Butrica has shown that another group of mss. headed by Vat. Lat. 3273 has a stronger claim to be cited in the apparatus for these readings, as it antedates Δ. However, as the matter is controversial and not of vital importance for my discussions, the group is here ignored. In the absence of a satisfactory arrangement of the humanistic conjectures into groups akin to those introduced by Mynors in his Catullus, I use the age-old catch-all ς for unauthoritative readings found in fifteenth-century mss. (shrink)

What follows is a list of corrections to my ‘Discordia taetra: the history of a hexameter-ending’, CQ 41 , 138–49. Most of these are owed to the researches of Dr Nigel Holmes, author of the preceding article, and I am most grateful to him for his material, and to the editors of CQ for giving me this opportunity for correction; my humble apologies for human error in my pre-CD-ROM era. I am glad to say that none of the article's conclusions (...) are substantially modified by these corrections. (shrink)

Epode 10: the Mystery of Mevius' Crime Horace's tenth Epode, an inverse propempticon, calls down dire curses on the head of a man named Mevius as he leaves on a sea-voyage.1 Scholars have naturally been interested in what Mevius had done to merit such treatment, but answers have been difficult to find, for nothing explicit is said on this topic in the poem; as Leo noted, ‘[Horatius] ne verbo quidem tarn gravis odii causam indicat’. This is in direct contrast with (...) the Strasbourg epode usually attributed to Hipponax , which served as Horace's model in this poem; there it is clear that the similar curses on a departing sailor are caused by his breaking of oaths to the poet and betrayal of their previous friendship . One might expect Horace to give some kind of indirect suggestion of the nature of Mevius’ offence, but even this is despaired of by Fraenkel: ‘There is no hint at the sort of crime which Mevius is said to have committed, nor is anything said about the man himself; he remains an entirely shadowy figure’. The best that scholars have been able to do is to follow the ancient commentary of Porphyrio in suggesting that Horace's Mevius is to be identified with the poetaster attacked by Vergil in Ecl. 3.90 ‘qui Bavium non odit, amet tua carmina, Mevi’. Though it is pleasant to think of Vergil and Horace, perhaps by now friends in the circle of Maecenas, ganging up on a luckless hack, there is, as Fraenkel points out, no mention in the tenth Epode that Mevius is a poet, and his literary incompetence, assuming he is Vergil's poet, does not seem to underlie or indeed warrant the bitter imprecations of the poem: Catullus might wish a dire fate on the works of a bad poet , but to long for their author's shipwreck and consumption by gulls might indeed seem excessive. (shrink)

Pythian 11 is usually reckoned to be a particularly problematic Pindaric ode. I hope to show that it is not, and in the process make some points which will have a bearing on interpretation of some of Pindar's other odes. Rather than go through the whole poem step by step, I shall concentrate on the main problems and on some particular passages. The most disputed problem is the myth. What is the relevance of the story of Agamemnon's return from Troy, (...) his murder by Clytemnestra, and her murder by Orestes, all of which takes up the central part of the poem? The myth appears even more irrelevant because after telling it Pindar seems to acknowledge that it was a mistake to have told it in the first place. What does he mean by saying that he went off course when he told it? The second major problem comes after the myth and again concerns Pindar's apparently veering off suddenly into irrelevance. No sooner has he catalogued the victories of the winner's family than he launches into a denunciation of tyrannies and announces his support of moderation . Why does he do that? The poem ends, after the social and political comments, with an epode devoted to Castor and Polydeuces, Spartan heroes, and the Theban hero Iolaos. Are they a sign that Pindar puts his hope in an alliance of Thebes with Sparta to win freedom from Athens? And was Pindar in the myth ‘telling us not only what Thrasydaios of Thebes the victor is, but also what he is not: he is not exposed to the kinds of peril that plagued the great house of Atreus?’. (shrink)

Despite the long controversy on the date and composition of the First Philippic, we are no nearer, it would seem, to a satisfactory solution. F. Focke, apparently following a suggestion in Gercke-Norden, developed what is perhaps the most reasonable presentation of the view that the speech was delivered in the spring of 350 B.C.; but what vitiates his argument in the long run is Focke's constant presumption that all the various datable references must belong to one and the same speech (...) or stratum of composition. For although the view of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, that the First Philippic really comprises two distinct speeches, has not in its extreme form won acceptance with modern scholars, other more moderate solutions are not impossible; and it would seem that Blass's revision theory suggests a more subtle way of handling the various inconsistencies between the first and the second parts of the speech. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta la cuestión de si las creencias religiosas son o no razonables, es decir, si tienen o no una evidencia razonable que las sustente. El interés no es comprobar la existencia de Dios, sino simplemente saber si el lenguaje religioso como tal tiene o no sentido. Para esto, primero veremos la concepción de la creencia en general. A continuación, trataremos las creencias religiosas bajo dos puntos de vistas totalmente opuestos: por un lado, se expondrá la posición de autores (...) que dicen que las creencias religiosas sí tienen una evidencia razonable que las sustenta y, por otro, nos encontraremos con autores que afirman que dichas creencias no pueden ser justificadas racionalmente porque lo espiritual refiere el ámbito de lo indecible, en el cual no es factible afirmar que los enunciados religiosos son apropiados a ser verdaderos o falsos. (shrink)

Gaston Fessard employs Hegel’s dialectical logic to clarify how St. Ignatius’s _Spiritual Exercises_ envisage and prepare the decisions and choices between contrasting options or major turning points in spiritual life, in moments of what Ignatius would call _Election_.

There are good reasons for envisioning a global discourse about God, premised necessarily agreed upon perfections considered to be by definition proper to God, and for thinking through the implications of our understanding of God for morality. Philosophically, it makes sense to hold that claims about omnipotence, omniscience, and other superlative perfections are indeed maximal, and define “God” wherever the terminology of divine persons is taken up. Religiously too, it makes sense to assert that a deity possessed of perfections is (...) not just the deity of one’s own tribe or religion, but also the deity of the whole world, whether acknowledged as such or not. This essay delves into the larger set of rich complexities by three moves. First, I look into a single extended historical case of the extension of the discourse about God beyond the Christian West, the discourse on God proffered by Western Jesuit missionaries in India from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. Second, I place next to that Jesuit learning the instance of a famed Hindu theologian’s discourse on God, God’s perfections, and their moral implications. Third, I briefly step back and assess the dangers and fruitful prospects inherent in thinking about God and morality in an interreligious context. (shrink)

There is, in the Ramsey Archive at the Hillman Library of the University of Pittsburgh, a note, written in 1929, in Ramsey's hand and mostly in German, consisting of twenty paragraphs the contents...

El artículo estudia cómo la fenomenología puede contribuir al quehacer teológico. A tal fin, el prof. Gilbert comienza por identificar los inicios de la fenomenología. Seguidamente, presenta lo que él denomina fenomenología “descriptiva”, marcada por las ciencias humanas, que sirvió para reconocer las características esenciales de la religión. Pero la fenomenología puede dar un paso más, ya estrictamente filosófico, para elaborar un modo de fenomenología “especulativa”. Finalmente, el artículo indica las aportaciones de esta esta fenomenológica al desarrollo de la teología, (...) estudiando las propuestas de Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion y Emmanuel Falque. (shrink)

Introduction -- Tending the dark fire: the Boehmian notion of drive -- The night-side of nature: the early Schellingian unconscious -- The speculative psychology of dissociation: the later Schellingian unconscious -- Schellingian libido theory.