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The Art of Communicative Grammar Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2024-02-01 David Christenson
This review article of the Oxford Latin Syntax (Vols. I-II, 2015 and 2021) demonstrates how the communicative approach of Harm Pinkster’s monumental grammar complements recent revivals of oral, aural, and active Latin pedagogical methods. I conclude with examples of how Pinkster’s analysis of discourse may be applied to select passages (from Plautus’ Rudens, as a productive means of explicating dramaturgical
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Lucretius’ Allegoresis and Invective Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2024-01-27 Mikolaj Domaradzki
The present paper suggests that Lucretius’ Magna Mater interpretation (2.598-660) can fruitfully be approached through the lens of invective oratory. While this difficult passage of De rerum natura has long puzzled scholars, this article argues that in his interpretation Lucretius masterfully transforms the encomiastic topos of allegoresis into a powerful means of blame: the poet allegorically interprets
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Gegen wen ist Kuria Doxa 33 gerichtet? Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Jan Maximilian Robitzsch
Scholars usually understand Κύρια Δόξα (ΚΔ) 33 as an antiplatonic polemic. This paper denies the communis opinio. First, it argues for an ontological reading of the maxim according to which justice (understood as virtue) is not a body but a property. Second, it shows that the Stoics hold the very thesis disputed in ΚΔ 33, namely that virtue is a body. This makes the Stoa the natural target of the
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Pistis and Apodeixis: On the Disputed Interpretation of Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.1, 1355a5-6 Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Jamie Dow
‘We are convinced most of all whenever we take something to have been demonstrated’ (1355a5-6). The meaning and significance of this claim is a key point of dispute between those who take Aristotle’s project in the Rhetoric to be defending his distinctively argument-centred kind of rhetoric on the grounds that it is most persuasively effective, and those for whom he does so on the more normatively-charged
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Provoking Politeness Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Oscar Goldman
Dialogic interaction plays important generic, poetic, and structural roles within hexametric Latin satire. One aspect of this interaction which has received little prior exegesis is the presence, or lack, of politeness. By adapting and applying existing models which study this sociolinguistic phenomenon, we can perceive not only patterned use of politeness across the genre, but further intertextuality
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Statues, Roads, and Money Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Claire McGraw
The differences between the narratives about Augustus’ silver statues in Cassius Dio, Augustus himself, and Suetonius are better explained in the context of gift-debt and gift-exchange rather than focusing on cult alone. Whereas Suetonius and Augustus emphasize Augustus’ correction of the statues as a pious act and a statement on imperial honors, Dio overlooks honors and gods, instead revealing how
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Anchoring Genealogy: Hecataeus of Miletus, Pherecydes of Athens, and Herodotus Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2024-01-23 Joseph Zehner
The writings of both Hecataeus and Pherecydes focus on genealogies, but scholars have characterized their styles differently: Hecataeus is anti-traditional and idiosyncratic, while Pherecydes is an impartial recorder of myths. This contribution argues for a neglected side of each author: Hecataeus follows Homeric genealogical traditions, while Pherecydes constructed novel genealogies of his own. Both
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Qui volunt eos cognoscere, Argonautas legant Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2024-01-19 Alexandra Madeła
The late antique De excidio Troiae historia, supposedly written by a soldier in the Trojan War, Dares the Phrygian, encourages the reader to consult a work called Argonautae. This article discusses three possibilities of how to understand this reference—it could either be a comment by the real author of this pseudonymous work, or the supposed translator Nepos, or the ostensible author Dares. It argues
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‘Solving’ the Paradox of the Odyssean Ethiopians’ Twin Dual Localization: The Narrative Significance of Literary Spatiality Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Joel Gordon
This paper considers the narrative significance of localization in Homer’s Odyssey, in particular singular places that are associated with multiple spaces (identified here as dual localization). Our reading posits that spatial features hold narrative significance and, once uncovered, this resolves ‘problematic’ issues that may arise from spatial paradoxes. The chosen case study is the Odyssean land
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On Prodicus and the Derveni Papyrus Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2024-01-03 John Henry
Another identification for the author of the Derveni papyrus has been suggested: the fifth-century BCE sophist Prodicus of Ceos. Producing over 18 testimonia, Lebedev argues that the Derveni papyrus and the thought of Prodicus agree on many points that have previously been disregarded, including their linguistic approach and cosmological doctrines. On the basis of this evidence, it is suggested that
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The Final Chapter of Aristotle’s Poetics Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-12-22 Stavros Tsitsiridis
In the following close examination of chapter 26 of Aristotle’s Poetics it is argued (a) that unlike the main part of the treatise, tragedy and epic are no longer compared in the frame of ‘poetic art’, i.e. as literary genres, but rather as Gesamtkunstwerke judged by elitist criteria; (b) that the chapter adopts a logical method of argumentation founded on the dialectical method of the Topics; (c)
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The Three Parts of Philosophy Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-12-24 Lorenzo Salerno
In Pl. 1.3, Apuleius provides an account of the genesis of the tripartition of philosophy, recalling its incorrect (but by then traditional) attribution to Plato. In doing so, Apuleius states that Plato showed that the three parts of philosophy do not fight each other, but on the contrary support each other with mutual aid. While the meaning of the passage is clear, the text has been long debated.
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Vividness and Spatial Scenes Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-12-24 Kathrin Winter
Heraclitus’ fragments employ a powerful literary technique which is used to convey information without giving it directly: the texts appeal to sensation and bodily experience to evoke spatial scenes and so become intuitively comprehensible and display a surprisingly vivid quality. The means to bring this effect about can be analysed and explained with approaches from cognitive studies. This article
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Exspatiantur: Warum scheitert der ovidische Phaethon am Sternbild des Skorpions? Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-12-22 Wolfgang Hübner
The ride of the Ovidian Phaethon hitherto has not been explained sufficiently, in particular by J. Loos in Mnemosyne 2008 and 2012. Instead for the different motion of the sun one has to regard the particularities and position of the zodiacal signs, especially that of the Scorpion.
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Lucanian Pragmatism and the Manilian Cosmos Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-11-25 Elaine C. Sanderson
Lucan’s invocation to Nero (1.33-66) is notorious for its seemingly contradictory praise and condemnation of the emperor. While analyses of this passage often turn to Virgil’s Georgics (1.24-28, 489-497, 500-515) to begin to explain this inherent paradox, Grimal (2010) has demonstrated the importance of Manilius’ Astronomica as a cosmological framework for these lines which invites a more positive
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The Hymn to Delos and Callimachus’ Blame of Thebes Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-11-13 Leanna Boychenko
This article seeks to explain Callimachus’ blame of Thebes in the Hymn to Delos, arguing that Callimachus uses Apollo as a mouthpiece to voice the goals of his poetic project, signaling not only the influence of earlier Greek works—particularly Pindar’s Isthmian 1—but also his departure from these models. Moreover, Callimachus’ relationship with Pindar is more than simply literary, as shown through
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Did Fully Fledged humanitas Exist before the Ciceronian Age?: A Study on the Relation between humanus, its Comparative and Superlative, and the Noun humanitas Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-11-13 Simon Mollea
This article investigates the relationship between the noun humanitas and the adjective humanus. In particular, it argues that literary evidence suggests that the comparative and the superlative of humanus are far more suitable than its positive grade to render the Greek ideas of παιδεία and/or φιλανθρωπία which are usually subsumed in the word humanitas. One of the main consequences of this is therefore
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Procopius of Caesarea, Peter the Patrician, and the Outbreak of the Gothic War Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-10-19 Dariusz Brodka✝
This article seeks to answer several questions about Procopius’ account of the causes for the Gothic war. The fundamental question is who was responsible for Amalasuintha’s death. Another issue under scrutiny relates to Procopius’ sources. The figure of Peter the Patrician sketched by Procopius is another point of interest. In the light of a comparative analysis of the sources, the accusation of Peter
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Ismene, Interrupted: Conflict and Resolution through the Particle μέν in Sophocles’ Antigone Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-10-10 Erynn Kim
This article studies the usage of the particle μέν as a discourse marker in the speech of Antigone and of Ismene in Sophocles’ Antigone, focusing on the prologue and the final dialogue between the two sisters. By demonstrating how the discursive practices of the sisters reflect their respective styles of reasoning, particularly through their differing usages of the particle μέν, this article explores
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Group Minds in Ancient Narrative Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-10-06 Chrysanthos S. Chrysanthou
The present article adopts a cognitive approach to examine the representation of group minds in ancient narrative and show the specific purposes to which they are put. Herodian’s History of the Roman Empire, a work that illustrates the social and collective dimension of mental functioning, is chosen as a case study. After a brief exposition of the state of research on collective minds in narratology
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For the Most Part Serious? The Comic Potential of Authorial Metalepsis from Aristophanes to Lucian Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-10-05 Thomas Kuhn-Treichel
Scholarship has drawn a contrast between modern uses of metalepsis (illogical transgressions of narrative levels), which are frequently assigned comic effects, and their ancient counterparts, which are deemed more serious. This article argues that in the case of authorial metalepsis, a way of expression presenting the narrator as bringing about the effects he describes, the comic potential was already
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On the Imperfect ἐβίβασκεν (Homeric Hymn to Apollo 133) and the Causative Forms of the Paradigm of βαίνω Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-10-04 José Miguel Jiménez Delgado, Patricia García Zamora
The imperfect ἐβίβασκεν (h.Ap. 133) has generally been considered an Ionic imperfect of βίβημι / βιβάω. However, its morphosemantic characteristics instead suggest an imperfect of βιβάσκω, a derivative of the former with the suffix -σκω. This present is used in the classical period with a causative value, but in the archaic period was documented in an inchoative sense. This evolution forms part of
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Patterns of Religious Content and Narrative Arrangement in Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-09-29 Vasileios Liotsakis
This study examines three patterns of religious content in Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander: (a) ritual reports, (b) religious material culture, and (c) omens. Although ritual reports and omens mainly mark turning points of the expedition and certain qualities of Alexander’s character, the passages pertaining to religious material culture also transfer our focal point of interest to the author’s religious
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The Names of Sidonius’ Addressees and the Manuscript Tradition of the Letters Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-09-29 Giulia Marolla
Sidonius is often the only source of information on his addressees. Following Dolveck’s stemma codicum of Sidonius’ Letters, the present contribution offers a timely reassessment of the manuscript tradition attesting the names of his addressees by using manuscript studies and onomastics as a tool for prosopography. The paper first examines the evolution of onomastics in the Late Antique West and Sidonius’
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The Text of Aristotle’s Poetics and its Arabic Translation: Two Thorny Case Studies Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-09-28 José B. Torres Guerra
This contribution highlights the importance of the Arabic version of the Poetics in establishing the text of this work. This is a well-known fact, expressly considered in the most recent editio maior of the Poetics. Nonetheless, the latter edition does not discuss all the evidence relating to the Arabic translation. This article examines two much-discussed passages of the Poetics (1454b30-32, 1448a25-28)
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Leben im Verborgenen Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-09-26 Simon Varga
This article focusses on an examination of Epicurus’ understanding of self-sufficiency, which is only marginally addressed within research. But many traditions suggest paying more attention to the concept of self-sufficiency. The scarcity of available sources must be regarded as problematic; therefore here an attempt is made to reconstruct this concept. The thesis is that Epicurus discusses human striving
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Reading Skillfully Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-09-26 Travis Mulroy
This paper examines Socrates’ problematic analogy of reading big and little letters in Book 2 of Plato’s Republic. The examination highlights a significant grammatical detail, which has been generally overlooked in contemporary Platonic scholarship: Socrates refers to the justice of the city as ‘doing one’s own thing’ (τὸ αὑτοῦ πράττων), in the singular, but the justice of the individual as ‘doing
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Throwing Jason off the Scent Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-09-26 Alastair Daly
This article argues that Apollonius was aware of the foul smell of the Lemnian women and its mythological variants. While Apollonius does not mention the δυσοσμία, he builds a complex allusion to it and its omission around the rare verb ἀμαλδύνω. Its deployment to cap Hypsipyle’s speech to Jason (A.R. 1.834) draws a parallel between her erasure of the Lemnian crime and the obliteration of the Achaean
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Valerius Maximus on Exceptional Honours—and the Augustan Principate (V. Max. 8.15) Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-09-26 Heiko Westphal
In chapter 8.15 of his Facta et dicta memorabilia, the Tiberian author Valerius Maximus offers his readers a series of historical exempla which depict the grant of extraordinary honours to deserving individuals. Surprisingly, however, Valerius explains that he has no intention of engaging with any of the honours granted to the imperial family. While, so far, Valerius’ claim has not been called into
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Voces Furiarum Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-09-26 Joshua M. Paul
I argue that Priapus offers a bilingual gloss on the name ‘Tisiphone’ in Horace, Satires 1.8. I trace the folk etymology of the Fury’s name and identify various passages in which Latin authors emphasize a perceived connection between Tisiphone and φωνή, voice. I then demonstrate how this bilingual pun casts Priapus as a narrator capable of learned, Alexandrian wordplay.
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Muses as ‘Fellow Citizens’? Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-09-23 Tomasz Mojsik
In line 1 of the so-called Seal (118 AB), Posidippus invokes Μοῦσαι πολιήτιδες (‘Muses fellow citizens’). This fact has puzzled scholars for years, as the Muses are nowhere else referred to as such. Referring to an epigram of Queen Eurydice, a dedication in honour of the Muses from the Pella area as well as evidence of cultural activity in the Macedonian capital, I demonstrate that the term πολιήτιδες
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Noisy Omens and Enslaved Gods Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-09-19 Matthieu Réal
I offer a reconsideration of Zoilus’ treatise Against Homer’s Poetry. Two fragments of this work, F9a and F14 Fogagnolo, especially showcase Zoilus’ significance in the context of ancient literary criticism. F9a is usually considered a sarcastic comment on Homer’s lack of realism. I propose instead that it is a critique of the way the poet crafted the bird omen of Il. 10.174-177: Zoilus regarded the
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Was Medusa a Priestess of Athena? Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-09-19 John Henry
In Book 4 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the famous backstory of the Gorgon Medusa is related by her slayer Perseus: Neptune raped her in the temple of Minerva, and the goddess turned her hair into snakes out of divine vengeance for the desecration of her sanctuary. With few exceptions, most Ovid scholars are hesitant to posit any explanation for Medusa’s appearance at the temple, which does not appear to
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The Subdivision of Boys in the Leonidean Decree (IG V.1 19) Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-08-15 Shanshan Bai
This paper examines two problematic appellations of boy victors, παῖς καθαρός and παῖς κρίσεως τῆς Ἀγησιλάου, and the subdivision of boys in the Spartan festival Leonidea in inscription IG V.1 19. I propose several emendations to the edition of this inscription with the hope to correct a mistake and add two events into the athletic contest. I argue that age and birth were important criteria for the
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Τὸ κενὸν τοῦ πολέμου (Th. 3.30.4) and Its Uses in Greek and Latin Texts Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-08-09 Antonis Tsakmakis
The analysis of Thucydides 3.30.4 (from the speech of Teutiaplos), which contains the obscure phrase τὸ κενὸν τοῦ πολέμου, as well as of all occurrences of the same phrase in Greek and Latin texts confirms the reading κενόν against the vv.ll. καινόν and κοινόν, and helps establishing the meaning of the proverbial expression πολλὰ (τὰ) κενὰ τοῦ πολέμου. It does not refer to a mental state (illusion
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Le culte de la déesse dardanienne, dea Dard(…), au cœur de la diplomatie divine de l’armée romaine Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-07-27 Arben Hajdari, Christophe J. Goddard
Tributes to the enigmatic dea Dard(…) show a typically Roman political and religious intention to show respect for a local deity, within the framework of the control of isolated but strategic areas in the heart of the Illyrian region and the province of Moesia Superior. These acts of piety reflect the desire on the part of the Roman authorities to carry out diplomatic action with the local population
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Olivier ou palmier ?: Iconographie et appropriation athénienne de la plante sacrée de l’accouchement de Léto Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-07-03 Ana Valtierra
The oldest Greek sources narrate how Leto at the time of childbirth held on to a palm tree on the island of Delos to help herself with the effort of contractions. Under this palm tree, the god Apollo was born, making it an element of sacred worship of which the ancients said that it never died. Despite the clarity of the sources in the plant identification from the 5th century BC onwards, we can observe
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Pherecydes in Alexandria Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-06-06 Laura Marshall
Pherecydes of Syros’ work is difficult to understand because of its fragmentary nature. A previously unexplored perspective on his work is to analyze how it was understood and used in Ptolemaic Alexandria, particularly by Eratosthenes and Callimachus. Eratosthenes’ distinction between Pherecydes of Syros and Pherecydes of Athens (DL 1.119) has been used as a key piece of evidence that those two authors
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Ἐπιλλίζω (Od. 18.11), from ἐπι(λ)λίγδην ‘Grazing’ (Il. 17.599) to ἰλλός ‘Squint-eyed’: History of a Misunderstanding Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-06-06 Claire Le Feuvre
The article argues that the Odyssean hapax ἐπιλλίζω (Od. 18.11) does not mean ‘to wink’, as traditionally assumed, but ‘to harass, to provoke’, and is the verbal base of the adverb ἐπι(λ)λίγδην ‘grazing’, said of a projectile. It belongs to the PIE root *sleig̑- ‘to rub’ (rather than ‘to slide’). The Odyssey only features the metaphoric use of the verb, but the proper meaning is preserved in Nicander’s
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Porphyry’s Life of Pythagoras and Athanasius’ Life of Antony Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-06-02 Andrew Cain
A little over a century ago, it was discovered that Athanasius’ Life of Antony echoes Porphyry’s Life of Pythagoras in two different passages, and scholars have since debated the implications of this clear intertextual linkage. Building on these initial findings, the present article adduces a previously undiscovered third echo of the Porphyrian Life and argues that Athanasius deploys this intertext
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Voices of the Dying Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-06-02 Janek Kucharski
This paper discusses the convention of off-stage cries deployed in Greek tragedy and satyr play chiefly to represent violent events. Unlike other studies dedicated to this topic, it is primarily focused on the cries themselves and to a lesser extent on their context, both dramatic and theatrical. Using the familiar distinction between word and action, it begins with a simple question: how exactly does
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The Capture of the Capitoline in Roman Historical Thinking Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-06-01 Jaclyn Neel
This article argues that the stories of Tarpeia and of Manlius Capitolinus are variations on a single, historically attested concern about internal enemies on the Capitoline. Moreover, the unusual presentation of these stories in Ovid in particular can be explained by various chemical properties of the mint, most likely located near the temple of Juno Moneta. Concerns about the safety of the mint in
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The Social Profile of Hippocrates’ Patients Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-05-27 W.V. Harris
The seven books of the Hippocratic Epidemics appear to make it possible to describe the social profile of the patients who frequented Greek doctors from the mid-fifth to the mid-fourth centuries, and in particular to decide whether doctors attended mainly to the well-to-do. Previous studies have concentrated on the epigraphical evidence for the high status of many of the Thasian patients who are named
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Virgilian Criticism and the Intertextual Aeneid Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-05-25 Elena Giusti
This review article of Joseph Farrell’s 2021 monograph on Virgil’s Aeneid (Juno’s Aeneid: A Battle for Heroic Identity, Princeton and Oxford) takes the cue from Farrell’s analysis of Virgil’s intertextuality with the Homeric epics and provides a methodological re-assessment of intertextuality in Virgilian studies and Latin literature more broadly. It attempts to retrace the theoretical history and
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An Aristotelian Account of Religious Music in Strabo, 10.3 Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-05-23 Mor Segev
Strabo, in 10.3.7-23, presents an account of the music performed in initiation rites, according to which such music is used, naturally, to facilitate knowledge of divinity. I argue that, despite appearances, religious music, for Strabo, does not fulfill that function by reflecting the harmonious constitution of the cosmos—a Pythagorean-Platonic (and later, Stoic) idea that Strabo mentions but ultimately
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Diphilus’ Paralyomenos (P. Louvre 7733v, col. ii, 32-35): Reading the Evidence Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-05-23 Ioanna Karamanou
P. Louvre 7733v is the only source to attest a comedy by Diphilus entitled Paralyomenos and fr. 59 K.-A. from this play. This article ventures a cautious interrogation of the available—albeit limited and thus unexplored—evidence, with the purpose of extracting as much material as possible that could shed light on this play’s dramatic circumstances. It is argued that the present participle in the title
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How to Turn a Hero into a Comic miles Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-05-20 Silvia Speriani
This paper aims, on the one hand, at contributing to the analysis of one of the most enduring stock-characters in Roman comedy: the comic soldier, in its Plautine manifestations in particular. On the other hand, it will shed light on a much more serious soldier: Telamonian Ajax, and his in some way unfortunate reception. Weaving a twofold discussion of such apparently distant figures, I will evaluate
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Epic Boasts and Empty Threats Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Zachary P. Biles, Thérèse M. Watkins
An unnoticed allusion to Homer’s Iliad in Catullus c. 37 contributes to the poem’s recognized military theme by providing a clearer correspondence between figures from epic and those in Catullus’ poem, while also establishing a new framework for analyzing the dynamics of the poet’s verbal attack on his rivals that ultimately implicates him in his own mockery.
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Revisiting Apuleius’ De re publica (Fulgentius, Expositio sermonum antiquorum 44) Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Leonardo Costantini
This study focuses on a fragment of Apuleius’ lost De re publica preserved in Fulgentius, Expositio sermonum antiquorum 44. After reviewing earlier scholarship on this passage, it is argued that its Plautine vocabulary is consistent with Apuleius’ archaising style, far from being evidence against Apuleius’ paternity. An echo of Aristophanes, Knights 542 is discussed (a tag that later became a political
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Searching for a Semantic Parallel to the Concept of Depression Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Enrico Cerroni
This paper examines whether a semantic parallel to the modern use of the word depression can be identified in ancient Greek. To that end, it retraces the development of the lexical family of the verb θλίβω, ‘to press’, and the abstract noun θλῖψις to gain the emotional and psychological meaning of ‘pressure’ or ‘affliction’. An analysis of the collected data suggests that a similar valence may be found
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Ovid and Petronius’ Pyramus and Thisbe (Satyricon 131.8-11 and Metamorphoses 4.55-166) Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-03-31 Peter Agócs, Jessica Lightfoot
Petronius’ engagement with Ovid’s poetry in the Croton episode of the Satyricon is more extensive than has previously been appreciated. As well as drawing upon Ovidian elegiac poetry, especially Amores 3.7, the description of Encolpius’ second failed tryst with Circe at Satyricon 131.8-11 also alludes to Ovid’s narrative of Pyramus and Thisbe at Metamorphoses 4.55-166. This ironic perversion of one
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Clement of Alexandria’s Stromata in the Early 16th Century Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-03-20 Guillermo Galán Vioque
This article examines the citations from Clement of Alexandria’s Stromata prior to the editio princeps by Piero Vettori (1550) and provides new data on the relationship between that edition and the manuscripts that have preserved this work for future generations.
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Un chapitre négligé de la dérivation nominale du grec ancien Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-03-18 Enrique Nieto Izquierdo
This article offers a lexical study of the abbreviated simple personal names in Ancient Greek. Rarer than abbreviated compound names and usually neglected in scientific literature, they can be sorted in different lexical categories: short forms related to gods’ names and their derivatives, which are the commonest, ethnics, and, finally, other vocabulary, mainly descriptive adjectives and names of animals
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Aelian and the Gods of Comedy Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-03-09 Francisco Barrenechea
Aelian offers a curious example of how comedy was tied to religion during the Second Sophistic. He describes a votive relief dedicated by the Old Comic poet Theopompus to Asclepius, which he interprets as a symbol of the genre (Theopomp. Com. test. 2 PCG = Ael. fr. 102 Domingo-Forasté). My article situates this passage within the style and purpose of Aelian’s miscellanies, in order to explore how he
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The Didactic Oracle: The Delphic Oracle in Plutarch’s ‘Delphic Dialogues’ Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-01-26 Rebecca A. Frank
Plutarch’s ‘Delphic dialogues’—De E apud Delphos, De Pythiae oraculis, and De defectu oraculorum—contain a series of conversations held at Delphi regarding different aspects of the god, the oracle, and the oracular sanctuary. In these dialogues Delphi stands as a touchstone for humans to access divine knowledge through the oracular responses, but also through its physical presence. I argue that through
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Astronomical Imagery in Two Epigrams Ascribed to Germanicus Caesar (Anthologia Palatina 9.17 and 9.18) Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-01-23 Jessica Lightfoot
The presence of astronomical imagery in two consecutive epigrams on the theme of pursued hares in book 9 of the Anthologia Palatina (9.17 and 9.18) both strengthens their ascription to Germanicus Caesar and suggests that his astronomical and literary interests extended beyond the youthful production of a Latin translation of Aratus’ Phaenomena. The meaning of these two epigrams can only be understood
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Energeia in the Magna Moralia Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2023-01-12 Daniel Wolt
There is no clear consensus among scholars about the authenticity of the Magna Moralia. Here I present a new case for thinking that the work was composed by a later Peripatetic, and is not, either directly or indirectly, the work of Aristotle. My argument rests on an analysis of the author’s usage of ἐνέργεια, which is a fruitful way to investigate the date of the work: the term was apparently coined
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Ekphrasis and the Mind’s Ear Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2022-12-30 Caitlin Hines
The ekphrasis of Herakles’ shield in Pseudo-Hesiod’s Aspis comprises an immersive experiment in the poetics of sound. As complement to the standard modes of visualization that are crucial to effective ekphrasis, this poem’s rich soundscape invites the audience to ‘auralize’ the sounds described by the internal observer. From the monstrous noises emitted from the shield’s iconographic world to the overdetermined
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Artemidorus, Dream Exegesis, and the Case of the Interpolating Expert Dreamer Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2022-12-26 Claire Hall
This article makes the following case: according to Artemidorus of Daldis’ Oneirocriticon one main task of the dream interpreter is to identify, through knowledge of the dreamer, which components of a dream are internal in order to assess—as far as possible—the external components of a dream. I argue that very similar hermeneutic issues were being extensively theorised in Artemidorus’ period by Jewish
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A Functional Grammar Approach to Ancient Greek Syntax Mnemosyne Pub Date : 2022-12-26 Coulter H. George
This article reviews the Sintaxis del griego antiguo, a two-volume syntax of Ancient Greek drawing largely on the Functional Grammar approach. Accordingly, constructions are organized more by their synchronic function than by their diachronic origin, and considerable attention is paid to the wider context in which linguistic examples appear.