Pub Date : 2019-09-25DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0341
R. Finley, J. Vlasits, K. Vogt
In ancient philosophy, there is no discipline called “logic” in the contemporary sense of “the study of formally valid arguments.” Rather, once a subfield of philosophy comes to be called “logic,” namely in Hellenistic philosophy, the field includes (among other things) epistemology, normative epistemology, philosophy of language, the theory of truth, and what we call logic today. This entry aims to examine ancient theorizing that makes contact with the contemporary conception. Thus, we will here emphasize the theories of the “syllogism” in the Aristotelian and Stoic traditions. However, because the context in which these theories were developed and discussed were deeply epistemological in nature, we will also include references to the areas of epistemological theorizing that bear directly on theories of the syllogism, particularly concerning “demonstration.” Similarly, we will include literature that discusses the principles governing logic and the components that make up arguments, which are topics that might now fall under the headings of philosophy of logic or non-classical logic. This includes discussions of problems and paradoxes that connect to contemporary logic and which historically spurred developments of logical method. For example, there is great interest among ancient philosophers in the question of whether all statements have truth-values. Relevant themes here include future contingents, paradoxes of vagueness, and semantic paradoxes like the liar. We also include discussion of the paradoxes of the infinite for similar reasons, since solutions have introduced sophisticated tools of logical analysis and there are a range of related, modern philosophical concerns about the application of some logical principles in infinite domains. Our criterion excludes, however, many of the themes that Hellenistic philosophers consider part of logic, in particular, it excludes epistemology and metaphysical questions about truth. Ancient philosophers do not write treatises “On Logic,” where the topic would be what today counts as logic. Instead, arguments and theories that count as “logic” by our criterion are found in a wide range of texts. For the most part, our entry follows chronology, tracing ancient logic from its beginnings to Late Antiquity. However, some themes are discussed in several eras of ancient logic; ancient logicians engage closely with each other’s views. Accordingly, relevant publications address several authors and periods in conjunction. These contributions are listed in three thematic sections at the end of our entry.
{"title":"Greek and Roman Logic","authors":"R. Finley, J. Vlasits, K. Vogt","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0341","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0341","url":null,"abstract":"In ancient philosophy, there is no discipline called “logic” in the contemporary sense of “the study of formally valid arguments.” Rather, once a subfield of philosophy comes to be called “logic,” namely in Hellenistic philosophy, the field includes (among other things) epistemology, normative epistemology, philosophy of language, the theory of truth, and what we call logic today. This entry aims to examine ancient theorizing that makes contact with the contemporary conception. Thus, we will here emphasize the theories of the “syllogism” in the Aristotelian and Stoic traditions. However, because the context in which these theories were developed and discussed were deeply epistemological in nature, we will also include references to the areas of epistemological theorizing that bear directly on theories of the syllogism, particularly concerning “demonstration.” Similarly, we will include literature that discusses the principles governing logic and the components that make up arguments, which are topics that might now fall under the headings of philosophy of logic or non-classical logic. This includes discussions of problems and paradoxes that connect to contemporary logic and which historically spurred developments of logical method. For example, there is great interest among ancient philosophers in the question of whether all statements have truth-values. Relevant themes here include future contingents, paradoxes of vagueness, and semantic paradoxes like the liar. We also include discussion of the paradoxes of the infinite for similar reasons, since solutions have introduced sophisticated tools of logical analysis and there are a range of related, modern philosophical concerns about the application of some logical principles in infinite domains. Our criterion excludes, however, many of the themes that Hellenistic philosophers consider part of logic, in particular, it excludes epistemology and metaphysical questions about truth. Ancient philosophers do not write treatises “On Logic,” where the topic would be what today counts as logic. Instead, arguments and theories that count as “logic” by our criterion are found in a wide range of texts. For the most part, our entry follows chronology, tracing ancient logic from its beginnings to Late Antiquity. However, some themes are discussed in several eras of ancient logic; ancient logicians engage closely with each other’s views. Accordingly, relevant publications address several authors and periods in conjunction. These contributions are listed in three thematic sections at the end of our entry.","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86709395","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-09-25DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0340
A. Sillett
In 62 bce, the aging poet Aulus Licinius Archias was arraigned before the Praetor on a charge of having spent almost a quarter of a century fraudulently claiming to be a Roman citizen, thus breaking the Lex Papia de Peregrinis. Archias, who first arrived in Rome in 102 bce, had, since the conclusion of the Social War in 89 bce, been living as a Roman citizen and enjoying all of its attendant privileges. Archias’s defense was undertaken by a former pupil of his, the previous year’s Consul, Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero’s defense of Archias follows a two-pronged argument. After providing the jury with the legal foundations of Archias’s citizenship, he proceeds to argue that even if reasonable doubt were to surround Archias’s claim to be a Roman citizen, he should nevertheless be considered worthy of inclusion in the citizen body as a result of the contribution his poetry has made to the Republic. Although there is no direct evidence that this speech was a success, a later letter to Atticus suggests that Archias was indeed acquitted and remained a part of life at Rome. The text which Cicero later published as his Pro Archia attracts most scholarly attention for the so-called “Encomium of Literature” that Cicero delivers to convince the jury that Archias has contributed more than enough to the Republic to earn his citizenship. However, it also provides an invaluable insight into the early stages of Cicero’s senior statesman persona. Beyond this, the speech also offers readers a glimpse at the complicated procedures involved in spreading Roman citizenship throughout the Italian peninsula.
{"title":"Cicero's Pro Archia","authors":"A. Sillett","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0340","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0340","url":null,"abstract":"In 62 bce, the aging poet Aulus Licinius Archias was arraigned before the Praetor on a charge of having spent almost a quarter of a century fraudulently claiming to be a Roman citizen, thus breaking the Lex Papia de Peregrinis. Archias, who first arrived in Rome in 102 bce, had, since the conclusion of the Social War in 89 bce, been living as a Roman citizen and enjoying all of its attendant privileges. Archias’s defense was undertaken by a former pupil of his, the previous year’s Consul, Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero’s defense of Archias follows a two-pronged argument. After providing the jury with the legal foundations of Archias’s citizenship, he proceeds to argue that even if reasonable doubt were to surround Archias’s claim to be a Roman citizen, he should nevertheless be considered worthy of inclusion in the citizen body as a result of the contribution his poetry has made to the Republic. Although there is no direct evidence that this speech was a success, a later letter to Atticus suggests that Archias was indeed acquitted and remained a part of life at Rome. The text which Cicero later published as his Pro Archia attracts most scholarly attention for the so-called “Encomium of Literature” that Cicero delivers to convince the jury that Archias has contributed more than enough to the Republic to earn his citizenship. However, it also provides an invaluable insight into the early stages of Cicero’s senior statesman persona. Beyond this, the speech also offers readers a glimpse at the complicated procedures involved in spreading Roman citizenship throughout the Italian peninsula.","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79140626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-31DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0338
B. Burke
The history of archaeology of Greece as we know it today begins with prehistoric investigations that took place in the 19th century. Early excavations by Heinrich Schliemann, Arthur Evans, and Wilhelm Dörpfeld, along with Greek colleagues like Christos Tsountas, Panagiotis Stamatakis, Valerios Stais, and Antonios Keramopoulos laid the foundation for systematic, stratigraphic excavations. Research was heavily directed by ancient Greek texts, primarily the epic poems of Homer. Efforts to find archaeological truth to the legendary tales of the ancient heroes continue to be problematic, but, to a degree, early excavations revealed a rich and fascinating period of Greece’s development. Although the archaeological discoveries of Greek prehistory date to an age centuries older than Homer, the discoveries shed light on a vast, rich archaeological history, one upon which the Homeric tales were, at least partially, based. Early discoveries of prehistoric texts, especially on Crete with scripts in Hieroglyphic Minoan, Linear A (non-Greek), and Linear B (Greek), along with the enigmatic Phaistos disc, have expanded our understanding of the history of the Greek language and Greek people.
{"title":"Greek Prehistory Through the Bronze Age","authors":"B. Burke","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0338","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0338","url":null,"abstract":"The history of archaeology of Greece as we know it today begins with prehistoric investigations that took place in the 19th century. Early excavations by Heinrich Schliemann, Arthur Evans, and Wilhelm Dörpfeld, along with Greek colleagues like Christos Tsountas, Panagiotis Stamatakis, Valerios Stais, and Antonios Keramopoulos laid the foundation for systematic, stratigraphic excavations. Research was heavily directed by ancient Greek texts, primarily the epic poems of Homer. Efforts to find archaeological truth to the legendary tales of the ancient heroes continue to be problematic, but, to a degree, early excavations revealed a rich and fascinating period of Greece’s development. Although the archaeological discoveries of Greek prehistory date to an age centuries older than Homer, the discoveries shed light on a vast, rich archaeological history, one upon which the Homeric tales were, at least partially, based. Early discoveries of prehistoric texts, especially on Crete with scripts in Hieroglyphic Minoan, Linear A (non-Greek), and Linear B (Greek), along with the enigmatic Phaistos disc, have expanded our understanding of the history of the Greek language and Greek people.","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81871779","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-31DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0336
C. Moore, Christopher C. Raymond
Critias of Athens (c. 460–404/3 bce), a relative of Plato’s and scion of an elite family that counted Solon among its kin, is now best remembered for three things: an intellectual association with Socrates that ended unhappily; authorship of the so-called “Sisyphus” fragment, among the earliest extant presentations of atheism, and thus a leading instance of the naturalizing explanations typical of the Sophistic movement; and leadership in the so-called Thirty Tyrants, the murderous oligarchy that eliminated the democracy, perhaps with the aim to Spartanize the Athenian polis, in the year following the Peloponnesian War. The last seems to have overshadowed his many other intellectual and cultural accomplishments, as Aristotle and Philostratus suggest. Critias wrote works of almost unequalled generic variety: elegiac poetry, lectures, tragedies (perhaps), analyses of political constitutions (maybe in both poetry and prose), and even proto-dialogues (conceivably). He had a complex and enduring friendship with Alcibiades, a nexus of Athenian political, civic, and military life. Plato treats Critias as a central interlocutor in several dialogues—perhaps more frequently than anyone else besides Socrates. He made statements in natural philosophy, on the nature of soul and the relationship between cognition and perception. The extensive scholarship on Critias deals, in the majority case, with late-5th-century Athenian politics and Euripides’ fragmentary plays, to which ancient authors attributed the dramatic fragments thought to be his. He is less frequently discussed in studies of the Sophists, Presocratics, Socrates, or Plato—according to some scholars, rightly so. But he is not absent from those sub-disciplines, if in a scattered way, and synthetic studies of Critias, taking account at once of his political, literary, and philosophical life, have been produced over the past two centuries, especially in the form of dissertations. There is currently no monograph in English available. This bibliography provides a guide to the materials known about and from Critias; the problems specific to the various witnesses and texts; solutions offered by the scholarship; and the shape that future investigations might take. Since Critias is a figure known only incidentally by most students of classical antiquity it is worth listing here the “hot center” of debate. Why did Critias become an active member of the “Thirty” oligarchs, and what did he hope to bring about in Athens? How secure is the attribution of the dramatic fragments to him, and what might they reveal about his ethical or scientific commitments? Is he the character presented in Plato’s Timaeus and Critias, or is that his grandfather? What is Plato’s attitude toward him in the Charmides? Is Xenophon right to have treated Critias as virtually the most bloodthirsty of tyrants known to Greek history? Other questions include the position of Critias within the Athenian intellectual scene; the likely structure
{"title":"Critias of Athens","authors":"C. Moore, Christopher C. Raymond","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0336","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0336","url":null,"abstract":"Critias of Athens (c. 460–404/3 bce), a relative of Plato’s and scion of an elite family that counted Solon among its kin, is now best remembered for three things: an intellectual association with Socrates that ended unhappily; authorship of the so-called “Sisyphus” fragment, among the earliest extant presentations of atheism, and thus a leading instance of the naturalizing explanations typical of the Sophistic movement; and leadership in the so-called Thirty Tyrants, the murderous oligarchy that eliminated the democracy, perhaps with the aim to Spartanize the Athenian polis, in the year following the Peloponnesian War. The last seems to have overshadowed his many other intellectual and cultural accomplishments, as Aristotle and Philostratus suggest. Critias wrote works of almost unequalled generic variety: elegiac poetry, lectures, tragedies (perhaps), analyses of political constitutions (maybe in both poetry and prose), and even proto-dialogues (conceivably). He had a complex and enduring friendship with Alcibiades, a nexus of Athenian political, civic, and military life. Plato treats Critias as a central interlocutor in several dialogues—perhaps more frequently than anyone else besides Socrates. He made statements in natural philosophy, on the nature of soul and the relationship between cognition and perception. The extensive scholarship on Critias deals, in the majority case, with late-5th-century Athenian politics and Euripides’ fragmentary plays, to which ancient authors attributed the dramatic fragments thought to be his. He is less frequently discussed in studies of the Sophists, Presocratics, Socrates, or Plato—according to some scholars, rightly so. But he is not absent from those sub-disciplines, if in a scattered way, and synthetic studies of Critias, taking account at once of his political, literary, and philosophical life, have been produced over the past two centuries, especially in the form of dissertations. There is currently no monograph in English available. This bibliography provides a guide to the materials known about and from Critias; the problems specific to the various witnesses and texts; solutions offered by the scholarship; and the shape that future investigations might take. Since Critias is a figure known only incidentally by most students of classical antiquity it is worth listing here the “hot center” of debate. Why did Critias become an active member of the “Thirty” oligarchs, and what did he hope to bring about in Athens? How secure is the attribution of the dramatic fragments to him, and what might they reveal about his ethical or scientific commitments? Is he the character presented in Plato’s Timaeus and Critias, or is that his grandfather? What is Plato’s attitude toward him in the Charmides? Is Xenophon right to have treated Critias as virtually the most bloodthirsty of tyrants known to Greek history? Other questions include the position of Critias within the Athenian intellectual scene; the likely structure","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84658301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-31DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0335
A. Lianeri
Translation has been central to engagement with the Greek and Roman worlds and their cultures ever since antiquity. The classic, as a concept that defines inseparably the canonical status of these cultures and the modes of reading them, has been mediated by the enterprise of translation. Roman literature and philosophy were not only shaped by translating Greek works, but constructed Greek culture as a classic through the medium of translation. Because of the importance of translations for the understanding and dissemination of Greek and Latin, interest in this field has preoccupied classical scholarship. Yet paradoxically, translation remained until recently under-theorized, restricted to an educational tool for those having no access to the originals. The development of classical reception studies in the 1990s marked a shift in the discipline by bringing translation into the heart of debates about the afterlife of classical antiquity. This new approach was grounded in discussions of translation advanced in the recently formed field of translation studies, but also in a long tradition of philosophical approaches, ranging from hermeneutics to poststructuralism, to a metaphorical concept of translation. Classical scholarship offered a distinct contribution to the above discussions by deploying, but also qualifying, concepts of translation elaborated in the above fields, such as the dismantling of the simple binary opposition between translation and source text, the sociopolitical role of translations, translators’ agency, and the ethics and politics of translation practice. So an increasing number of works illuminate and theorize the seminal role of translations in shaping both the “classical” image of antiquity and its repercussions in the different contexts of its reception. A key contribution of this debate to the wider discussion of translation has been an emphasis on the mutually constitutive relationship between translation and source text, which entails that each of them actively shapes the meaning and cultural identity of the other. This bibliography does not exhaust the multifarious history of modes and practices of translating Greek and Latin texts across time. Nor does it reflect on problems pertaining to the practice of translating. However, it includes tools for the study of translation practice in history (bibliographies, reference works, databases), which feature more extensive bibliographical information. The bibliography’s key focus is on concepts and frameworks deployed for debating translations as historically-specific works that interpret the classics in terms that are multiply intertwined with the ethical, aesthetic, social, and political debates of their time.
{"title":"Translation and Classical Reception","authors":"A. Lianeri","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0335","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0335","url":null,"abstract":"Translation has been central to engagement with the Greek and Roman worlds and their cultures ever since antiquity. The classic, as a concept that defines inseparably the canonical status of these cultures and the modes of reading them, has been mediated by the enterprise of translation. Roman literature and philosophy were not only shaped by translating Greek works, but constructed Greek culture as a classic through the medium of translation. Because of the importance of translations for the understanding and dissemination of Greek and Latin, interest in this field has preoccupied classical scholarship. Yet paradoxically, translation remained until recently under-theorized, restricted to an educational tool for those having no access to the originals. The development of classical reception studies in the 1990s marked a shift in the discipline by bringing translation into the heart of debates about the afterlife of classical antiquity. This new approach was grounded in discussions of translation advanced in the recently formed field of translation studies, but also in a long tradition of philosophical approaches, ranging from hermeneutics to poststructuralism, to a metaphorical concept of translation. Classical scholarship offered a distinct contribution to the above discussions by deploying, but also qualifying, concepts of translation elaborated in the above fields, such as the dismantling of the simple binary opposition between translation and source text, the sociopolitical role of translations, translators’ agency, and the ethics and politics of translation practice. So an increasing number of works illuminate and theorize the seminal role of translations in shaping both the “classical” image of antiquity and its repercussions in the different contexts of its reception. A key contribution of this debate to the wider discussion of translation has been an emphasis on the mutually constitutive relationship between translation and source text, which entails that each of them actively shapes the meaning and cultural identity of the other. This bibliography does not exhaust the multifarious history of modes and practices of translating Greek and Latin texts across time. Nor does it reflect on problems pertaining to the practice of translating. However, it includes tools for the study of translation practice in history (bibliographies, reference works, databases), which feature more extensive bibliographical information. The bibliography’s key focus is on concepts and frameworks deployed for debating translations as historically-specific works that interpret the classics in terms that are multiply intertwined with the ethical, aesthetic, social, and political debates of their time.","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78228040","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-06-26DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0337
P. Finglass
Stesichorus was a Greek poet from the first half of the 6th century bce. Born probably in Metaurus in South Italy (today’s Gioia Tauro), he subsequently settled in Himera on the north coast of Sicily. His poetry consists of vivid mythological narratives, thousands of lines long, in lyric verse—that is, they are designed to be sung, in contrast to the recited epic poems of Homer, with which Stesichorus’s poetry creatively interacts. Stesichorus’s works were performed by a singing and dancing chorus—his very name means “he who sets up the chorus”—and were intended not merely for local festivals but for audiences across the Greek world. Stesichorus’s works had a considerable influence on later Greek poetry, especially tragedy; collected into twenty-six books in the Hellenistic period, they survived until roughly the 3rd century ce. For more than a millennium the only remains of Stesichorus’s oeuvre were quotations and paraphrases buried in the text of writers whose works did survive antiquity; but since the 1950s several ancient papyri, many of them extensive texts, have been published which furnish us with a clearer picture of one of the great poets of antiquity.
{"title":"Stesichorus of Himera","authors":"P. Finglass","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0337","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0337","url":null,"abstract":"Stesichorus was a Greek poet from the first half of the 6th century bce. Born probably in Metaurus in South Italy (today’s Gioia Tauro), he subsequently settled in Himera on the north coast of Sicily. His poetry consists of vivid mythological narratives, thousands of lines long, in lyric verse—that is, they are designed to be sung, in contrast to the recited epic poems of Homer, with which Stesichorus’s poetry creatively interacts. Stesichorus’s works were performed by a singing and dancing chorus—his very name means “he who sets up the chorus”—and were intended not merely for local festivals but for audiences across the Greek world. Stesichorus’s works had a considerable influence on later Greek poetry, especially tragedy; collected into twenty-six books in the Hellenistic period, they survived until roughly the 3rd century ce. For more than a millennium the only remains of Stesichorus’s oeuvre were quotations and paraphrases buried in the text of writers whose works did survive antiquity; but since the 1950s several ancient papyri, many of them extensive texts, have been published which furnish us with a clearer picture of one of the great poets of antiquity.","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89340498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-24DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0334
A. Petrović, I. Petrovic
“Epigram,” (Gr. epigramma) is one of the terms that the Greeks employed, from Herodotus onward, for short verse-inscriptions, poems typically composed in hexameters or elegiacs in order to be inscribed, and as a rule originally associated with a particular object, occasion, and context (such as dedicatory, funeral, honorific, or sympotic). By the virtue of its metrical form it constitutes a category separate from the prose inscriptions, and by the virtue of its conciseness, its reliance on the object, and the occasion, it stands apart from other verse-inscriptions (such as metrical oracles, hymns, or aretalogies which in some cases may also have extraordinary length). The history of inscribed epigram started in the second half of the 8th century bce and continued throughout the entirety of Greco-Roman antiquity. Inscribed epigrams are attested in significant numbers in all major areas inhabited by the Greeks, but also in remote areas of Asia and Egypt where Hellenization was relatively short-lived. Inscribed epigram flourished again during the Byzantine period, and the practice of carving epigrams on public monuments continued in Greece well into the modern period. These texts represent an invaluable source for literary, cultural, social, religious, art, and military history. From the Archaic and Classical periods, around 950 inscribed epigrams survive; from the Hellenistic period, based on the estimates, more than 1,500; from the later periods, and until the end of antiquity, several thousand poems survive. Poems are composed in a variety of meters, among which elegiac, hexameter, and iambic and trochaic tetrameter were most popular, but later texts also occasionally employ relatively less common meters such as Sotadeus or Priapeus. Some of the earliest inscriptional epigrams, attested on pottery, are composed in iambic meter and associated with the sympotic setting; in the course of early 6th century bce, dedicatory and funerary epigrams, often consisting of a single hexameter, gain in numbers. From around the middle of the 6th century bce, elegiac became by far the most dominant meter and would remain so until the end of Classical Antiquity. From the late 6th century bce onward new epigrammatic genres appeared (such as, e.g., epigrams that are distinctly honorific in nature, which are sometimes called “epideictic”), and prose inscriptions of various genres increasingly find their counterparts in verse-inscriptions (such as, e.g., iamata, binding spells, or building inscriptions). From the 5th century bce onward, professional poets are attested as authors of inscriptional epigrams. From the 4th century bce onward, there is conclusive evidence of collections of inscribed poems. From the early 3rd century bce at the latest, inscriptional epigram becomes a model for the by then fully established genre of literary epigram.
{"title":"Greek Inscribed Epigram","authors":"A. Petrović, I. Petrovic","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0334","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0334","url":null,"abstract":"“Epigram,” (Gr. epigramma) is one of the terms that the Greeks employed, from Herodotus onward, for short verse-inscriptions, poems typically composed in hexameters or elegiacs in order to be inscribed, and as a rule originally associated with a particular object, occasion, and context (such as dedicatory, funeral, honorific, or sympotic). By the virtue of its metrical form it constitutes a category separate from the prose inscriptions, and by the virtue of its conciseness, its reliance on the object, and the occasion, it stands apart from other verse-inscriptions (such as metrical oracles, hymns, or aretalogies which in some cases may also have extraordinary length). The history of inscribed epigram started in the second half of the 8th century bce and continued throughout the entirety of Greco-Roman antiquity. Inscribed epigrams are attested in significant numbers in all major areas inhabited by the Greeks, but also in remote areas of Asia and Egypt where Hellenization was relatively short-lived. Inscribed epigram flourished again during the Byzantine period, and the practice of carving epigrams on public monuments continued in Greece well into the modern period. These texts represent an invaluable source for literary, cultural, social, religious, art, and military history. From the Archaic and Classical periods, around 950 inscribed epigrams survive; from the Hellenistic period, based on the estimates, more than 1,500; from the later periods, and until the end of antiquity, several thousand poems survive. Poems are composed in a variety of meters, among which elegiac, hexameter, and iambic and trochaic tetrameter were most popular, but later texts also occasionally employ relatively less common meters such as Sotadeus or Priapeus. Some of the earliest inscriptional epigrams, attested on pottery, are composed in iambic meter and associated with the sympotic setting; in the course of early 6th century bce, dedicatory and funerary epigrams, often consisting of a single hexameter, gain in numbers. From around the middle of the 6th century bce, elegiac became by far the most dominant meter and would remain so until the end of Classical Antiquity. From the late 6th century bce onward new epigrammatic genres appeared (such as, e.g., epigrams that are distinctly honorific in nature, which are sometimes called “epideictic”), and prose inscriptions of various genres increasingly find their counterparts in verse-inscriptions (such as, e.g., iamata, binding spells, or building inscriptions). From the 5th century bce onward, professional poets are attested as authors of inscriptional epigrams. From the 4th century bce onward, there is conclusive evidence of collections of inscribed poems. From the early 3rd century bce at the latest, inscriptional epigram becomes a model for the by then fully established genre of literary epigram.","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86853724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-03-27DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0333
Fiona McHardy
Produced posthumously along with Iphigenia at Aulis and Alcmaeon in Corinth and awarded first prize at the City Dionysia in 405 bce, Euripides’ Bacchae is one of his most well-known and influential tragedies. One of the most significant aspects of the play, attracting religious, gendered, psychological, philosophical, and metatheatrical readings, is the appearance as a major character of the god Dionysus seeking to establish his cult in the city of Thebes. Dionysus is simultaneously an outsider, setting off from Lydia with his band of Asiatic maenads, and a son of the city, conceived by Semele, a member of the Theban royal family, and born out of his father Zeus’ thigh after the death of his mother. Worshipping Dionysus brings ecstasy and joy, experienced through revels, music, and dancing, yet there is also a vengeful and destructive side to the god. He seeks to punish his maternal aunts for their lack of belief in his divine parentage and drives them from the palace onto the mountains along with the other Theban women. At the same time, the Theban elder Cadmus, Dionysus’ maternal grandfather, and the prophet Tiresias attire themselves in Bacchic garb and head for the mountains in a show of respect for the god. But Cadmus’s grandson Pentheus, the ruler of the city, is hostile to the establishment of Dionysus’ cult and refuses to accept the outsider. In the course of the play, Pentheus confronts Dionysus and attempts to constrain him by force to reassert his control over the city. Yet it is impossible for a mortal to defeat a god. Intrigued by news of the women’s Bacchic revels on the mountains, Pentheus is persuaded by Dionysus to disguise himself as a maenad and visit the mountains to observe the women. A messenger reports the terrible news of Pentheus’s death, torn apart as if he were an animal in a Bacchic ritual, by his mother and her two sisters. The play culminates with a powerful scene in which Agave returns to the palace carrying the head of her own son, believing it to be the head of a mountain lion they have killed. During the scene her father Cadmus gradually helps her to see that she has in fact dismembered her own son. The play concludes with the exile of the remaining members of the royal family.
{"title":"Euripides’ Bacchae","authors":"Fiona McHardy","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0333","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0333","url":null,"abstract":"Produced posthumously along with Iphigenia at Aulis and Alcmaeon in Corinth and awarded first prize at the City Dionysia in 405 bce, Euripides’ Bacchae is one of his most well-known and influential tragedies. One of the most significant aspects of the play, attracting religious, gendered, psychological, philosophical, and metatheatrical readings, is the appearance as a major character of the god Dionysus seeking to establish his cult in the city of Thebes. Dionysus is simultaneously an outsider, setting off from Lydia with his band of Asiatic maenads, and a son of the city, conceived by Semele, a member of the Theban royal family, and born out of his father Zeus’ thigh after the death of his mother. Worshipping Dionysus brings ecstasy and joy, experienced through revels, music, and dancing, yet there is also a vengeful and destructive side to the god. He seeks to punish his maternal aunts for their lack of belief in his divine parentage and drives them from the palace onto the mountains along with the other Theban women. At the same time, the Theban elder Cadmus, Dionysus’ maternal grandfather, and the prophet Tiresias attire themselves in Bacchic garb and head for the mountains in a show of respect for the god. But Cadmus’s grandson Pentheus, the ruler of the city, is hostile to the establishment of Dionysus’ cult and refuses to accept the outsider. In the course of the play, Pentheus confronts Dionysus and attempts to constrain him by force to reassert his control over the city. Yet it is impossible for a mortal to defeat a god. Intrigued by news of the women’s Bacchic revels on the mountains, Pentheus is persuaded by Dionysus to disguise himself as a maenad and visit the mountains to observe the women. A messenger reports the terrible news of Pentheus’s death, torn apart as if he were an animal in a Bacchic ritual, by his mother and her two sisters. The play culminates with a powerful scene in which Agave returns to the palace carrying the head of her own son, believing it to be the head of a mountain lion they have killed. During the scene her father Cadmus gradually helps her to see that she has in fact dismembered her own son. The play concludes with the exile of the remaining members of the royal family.","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91158814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-27DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0331
N. Holzberg
Lysistrata was performed in the year 411 bce, either in winter at the Lenaia or in spring at the Dionysia. Athens, its position in the Peloponnesian War waged against Sparta since 428 now dangerously weakened by the catastrophic failure of the 413 Sicilian expedition, saw itself faced in early 411 with the prospect of having to submit to the enemy. Enter Lysistrata, who proposes a plan that, in its utopian character, is typical of Old Comedy: Athenian wives should declare a sex strike for as long as it takes their husbands to end the war. The storyline triggered by that begins in the first scene, but there very soon arises another line of action: the women of Athens occupy the Acropolis, the center of power over the polis, seize the treasury, and must now defend the citadel against the men. And when the old women who form one half of the chorus, prevent its other half, the old men, from setting the citadel alight, there ensues a fight between the two, and that develops into a third sequence of scenes which runs in counterpoint to the main action. All three, however, are integrated into a homogenous whole, and thus Lysistrata differs in its structure from Aristophanes’ earlier comedies: it does not merely consist in a series of loosely connected episodes. That, in turn, is reminiscent of the complex architecture created by the tragedians of the day, and as in one of those (Euripides), here too it is an exceptional woman who, probably for the first time in comedy and certainly for the first time as a citizen wife, stands center stage. Unity of action is also achieved by using the parabasis to have the chorus guide spectators from scene to scene rather than making it speak, as mostly in Aristophanes’ extant plays, with the voice of the poet; the traditional parabasis, in turn, appears in the (roughly comparable) form of Lysistrata’s speech 1112–1135 Again unlike the earlier comedies, Lysistrata contains but few verses in which public figures are ridiculed; that could be explained by Aristophanes’ intention to play his part in the necessary appeasement and conciliation, the above-mentioned crisis in Athens having had its effect on domestic politics. On the other hand, this comedy offers a conspicuous amount of obscenities, above all in scenes which show the men trying to persuade their wives to end the sex strike. But only when the former have declared themselves committed to negotiating a peace treaty are marriage and family restored in the oikos, the nucleus of the polis, and Lysistrata’s comic plan thus realized. Among all modern stage productions of Aristophanes’ comedies, it is Lysistrata that can claim the lion’s share.
{"title":"Aristophanes’ Lysistrata","authors":"N. Holzberg","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0331","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0331","url":null,"abstract":"Lysistrata was performed in the year 411 bce, either in winter at the Lenaia or in spring at the Dionysia. Athens, its position in the Peloponnesian War waged against Sparta since 428 now dangerously weakened by the catastrophic failure of the 413 Sicilian expedition, saw itself faced in early 411 with the prospect of having to submit to the enemy. Enter Lysistrata, who proposes a plan that, in its utopian character, is typical of Old Comedy: Athenian wives should declare a sex strike for as long as it takes their husbands to end the war. The storyline triggered by that begins in the first scene, but there very soon arises another line of action: the women of Athens occupy the Acropolis, the center of power over the polis, seize the treasury, and must now defend the citadel against the men. And when the old women who form one half of the chorus, prevent its other half, the old men, from setting the citadel alight, there ensues a fight between the two, and that develops into a third sequence of scenes which runs in counterpoint to the main action. All three, however, are integrated into a homogenous whole, and thus Lysistrata differs in its structure from Aristophanes’ earlier comedies: it does not merely consist in a series of loosely connected episodes. That, in turn, is reminiscent of the complex architecture created by the tragedians of the day, and as in one of those (Euripides), here too it is an exceptional woman who, probably for the first time in comedy and certainly for the first time as a citizen wife, stands center stage. Unity of action is also achieved by using the parabasis to have the chorus guide spectators from scene to scene rather than making it speak, as mostly in Aristophanes’ extant plays, with the voice of the poet; the traditional parabasis, in turn, appears in the (roughly comparable) form of Lysistrata’s speech 1112–1135 Again unlike the earlier comedies, Lysistrata contains but few verses in which public figures are ridiculed; that could be explained by Aristophanes’ intention to play his part in the necessary appeasement and conciliation, the above-mentioned crisis in Athens having had its effect on domestic politics. On the other hand, this comedy offers a conspicuous amount of obscenities, above all in scenes which show the men trying to persuade their wives to end the sex strike. But only when the former have declared themselves committed to negotiating a peace treaty are marriage and family restored in the oikos, the nucleus of the polis, and Lysistrata’s comic plan thus realized. Among all modern stage productions of Aristophanes’ comedies, it is Lysistrata that can claim the lion’s share.","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89845527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-27DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0329
W. Stenhouse
The early modern period (here defined as 1400–1600 ce) holds a fundamental position in the reception of classical architecture. It was in this period, for the first time since Antiquity, that architects studied classical buildings in order to assimilate ancient building techniques. It was also in this period that humanist philologists edited, translated, and commented on the text of the Roman architectural writer Vitruvius, providing scholars and architects with an example of a theoretical treatise on building. Connected with these two developments, it is in early modern period that we can first identify efforts to graphically record evidence of ancient buildings’ appearance. These endeavors are part of what we know as the European Renaissance, the wider cultural movement dedicated to the understanding and emulation of classical Antiquity. It is important to note that this was usually a practical endeavor: humanist scholars studied Antiquity in order not simply to replicate its achievements, but to adapt them to the needs of the present. It is therefore vital to contextualize the records that we have for the reception of classical architecture: plans of buildings from the period should not be seen as analogous to archaeological surveys, but representations made for particular ends; ancient buildings were reproduced in print for the first time in the Renaissance, but the requirements of the new medium, as well as the audience for new books, shaped how they appeared. This bibliography aims to provide the tools to allow that contextualization. There is no general guide to these developments. Archaeologists who have looked at this period have usually examined individual buildings and sites, placing early modern developments in a wider context. For historians of architecture, the Renaissance has long been a well-studied field, in which responses to classical architecture are a defining (if not the defining) feature, though the surveys of Renaissance architecture they have produced have tended, understandably, to concentrate on buildings made in response to the antique. Rome was the main site where Renaissance scholars and architects went to study ancient buildings, and as a result most modern scholarship has focused on responses to buildings in the city, although there are valuable contributions on southern France. Renaissance scholars read about Greek buildings in Roman writers, and puzzled over Greek terms, but few traveled to the eastern Mediterranean; an important exception is Ciriaco d’Ancona, in the first half of the 15th century.
{"title":"Classical Architecture in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe","authors":"W. Stenhouse","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0329","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0329","url":null,"abstract":"The early modern period (here defined as 1400–1600 ce) holds a fundamental position in the reception of classical architecture. It was in this period, for the first time since Antiquity, that architects studied classical buildings in order to assimilate ancient building techniques. It was also in this period that humanist philologists edited, translated, and commented on the text of the Roman architectural writer Vitruvius, providing scholars and architects with an example of a theoretical treatise on building. Connected with these two developments, it is in early modern period that we can first identify efforts to graphically record evidence of ancient buildings’ appearance. These endeavors are part of what we know as the European Renaissance, the wider cultural movement dedicated to the understanding and emulation of classical Antiquity. It is important to note that this was usually a practical endeavor: humanist scholars studied Antiquity in order not simply to replicate its achievements, but to adapt them to the needs of the present. It is therefore vital to contextualize the records that we have for the reception of classical architecture: plans of buildings from the period should not be seen as analogous to archaeological surveys, but representations made for particular ends; ancient buildings were reproduced in print for the first time in the Renaissance, but the requirements of the new medium, as well as the audience for new books, shaped how they appeared. This bibliography aims to provide the tools to allow that contextualization. There is no general guide to these developments. Archaeologists who have looked at this period have usually examined individual buildings and sites, placing early modern developments in a wider context. For historians of architecture, the Renaissance has long been a well-studied field, in which responses to classical architecture are a defining (if not the defining) feature, though the surveys of Renaissance architecture they have produced have tended, understandably, to concentrate on buildings made in response to the antique. Rome was the main site where Renaissance scholars and architects went to study ancient buildings, and as a result most modern scholarship has focused on responses to buildings in the city, although there are valuable contributions on southern France. Renaissance scholars read about Greek buildings in Roman writers, and puzzled over Greek terms, but few traveled to the eastern Mediterranean; an important exception is Ciriaco d’Ancona, in the first half of the 15th century.","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"124 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91422867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：