This article analyses the power dynamics that Ovid stages in the Metamorphoses as interplay of rhetoric, monumental art, and poetry. It argues that (1) the transformations of gods can be read as a metaphor of rhetoric subjecting the audience to the speaker’s will; (2) that the products of the transformations of humans can be regarded as notional monuments to divine power; (3) that, for Ovid, all successful

This paper examines direct speech introduced by two or more verbs of speech in selected works by Gregory of Tours (sixth century). It describes combinations of verbs in the reporting clause and shows that the classification of an instance as redundant cannot rely only on the co-occurrence of two verbs of speech in the reporting clause, but that it is necessary to consider the meaning of these verbs

This study focuses on some aspects of the church father Clement of Alexandria’s interpretation of the sixth beatitude of the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God”. Clement connects “purity of heart” to the idea of withdrawal from evil and growth in practical well-doing and sees it as an intermediate phase and a process on the way towards the contemplation and knowledge

This paper offers an edition and discussion of a Greek papyrus fragment (P.B.U.G. inv. 122A) dated to the first half of the second century BCE. The document was originally most likely a private six-witness contract which was subsequently validated and registered in the local notary office. It is also argued that the text belongs to the dossier of Daippos, the representative of agoranomos Agathokles

This article presents a new edition of a fragment of an eleventh-century parchment from Qasr Ibrim (Q.I. 1964, 6a). An inspection of the manuscript led to identification of one of the pieces as a s...

In our second article (for the previous one see SO 92, 2018, 57–64) we discuss the following textual issues in Oedipus Tyrannos: I. 31–34 we are in favour of Johnson’s and Musgrave’s ἰσούμeνοί σ᾽. ...

In this paper, we revisit P.Hamb. II 134, which preserves a fragmentary declamation on the familiar aristeus theme, suggest a number of improvements to the text and provide an English translation. ...

The following paper discusses the so-called Dramation by Michael Haplucheir (twelfth century). It argues that this text is not an attempt at reviving ancient drama but yet another literary experime...

(2019). Departments of Greek and Latin Studies in Norwegian Universities. Symbolae Osloenses: Vol. 93, Narrative, Narratology and Intertextuality: New Perspectives on Greek Epic from Homer to Nonnus, pp. 267-268.

(2019). Contributors’ Addresses. Symbolae Osloenses: Vol. 93, Narrative, Narratology and Intertextuality: New Perspectives on Greek Epic from Homer to Nonnus, pp. 269-270.

The history of ancient Greek literature can, in some way, be regarded and written as a history of epic poetry. Greek literature in its recorded form began and ended with two heavy epic “blows” that...

This article discusses oroskopia, gods looking at human affairs from a mountain, in terms of a topos with a collective intertextual tradition. That tradition was started by Homer who depicts Zeus l...

This contribution explores the use of apostrophe (address by the narrator to the heroic figures) in Nonnus’ Dionysiaca. Nonnus inherits the use of this device from his epic predecessors: the emotional force of apostrophe is present in Homer; apostrophe as a marker of intertextual engagement with other genres (such as hymns or bucolic poetry) can be found in Hellenistic poetry. Most of the apostrophes

This is a study of the literary modes and transformations of the narratorial νήπιος-comment in Greek epic from Homer to Nonnus. It explores the narrative settings, the typology, and the literary effects of this narrative device which both reveals the seams of the narrative levels and directs attention to the fragility of the human characters whose fate or ignorance of the actual situation is revealed

This article analyses and discusses the references to the Greek hero and demigod Heracles as they appear in the Homeric epics and in Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica. Methodologically, it is based on narratological character analysis in a diachronic perspective, and with a cognitive take. It is demonstrated that Heracles serves specific narrative and metapoetic purposes in all the three epics concerned

In the first line of the new Odyssey translation (2017) by Emily Wilson “Ἄνδρα […] πολύτροπον” is translated as “a complicated man”, and, for sure, Odysseus is one of the most fascinating, multifarious and complicated characters of Greek literature. This contribution traces different forms of engagement with the figure of Odysseus in the way the male protagonists of four late antique poems are characterized

This paper discusses four distinctive Homeric narrative features where an intertextual relationship between the Iliad and the Odyssey can be discerned: (1) the narrator's choice to begin the narration mid-fabula, pitching the narratee in medias res; (2) the narrator's initial declaration of a theme in the proem and the subsequent duplication of that theme in the course of the narrative; (3) the creation

This paper examines the ways in which the relationship between Helen and Paris is represented at different stages of the myth by two different epic texts – and how these representations interact. The first representation is found in Book 3 of the Iliad where Helen voices shame and disappointment with Paris after he has been defeated in combat by Menelaus. The second is a scene from Colluthus’ Abduction

This study considers the voice of the narrator in the Paraphrase of the Gospel of John, written by Nonnus of Panopolis in the fifth century, focusing on his self-presentation as both Johannine and Homeric narrator. The Paraphrase of the Gospel of John lacks explicit statements of poetic intent similar to the prefaces of other poetic paraphrases, such as Juvencus’ Evangeliorum libri quattuor and the

This article attempts to reconcile, at root, longstanding tensions between intertextuality, narrative function, context-sensitive semantics and formal, repetitive structure in oral and orally derived archaic epic hexameter diction. Calling upon a revised methodological model, drawn from the natural and exact sciences and the study of stochastic, non-deterministic and non-reversible process and, more

This article discusses some textual questions in Ajax leading to the following conclusions: I. 54 add ⟨τ᾽⟩ after λείας. – II. 208 the emendation ἠρεμίας (“rest”, “quietude”) suggested by Thiersch. – III. 405a–b the proposal κράτη / μοι to fill the lacuna. – IV. 476 defence of the line as transmitted. – V. 546 τοσόνδε to go with ϕόνον. – VI. 719 ἄνδρες, ϕίλον τι πρῶτον instead of ἄνδρες ϕίλοι, τὸ πρῶτον

This paper introduces the framework for a new project on the categories of tense, aspect and Aktionsart in Latin. In the first section, the relevant concepts are defined in terms of general linguistics. The second section provides an overview of the existing theories regarding the verb system and the categories of tense and aspect in Latin. Their shortcomings are listed while the strong points serve

While re-editing Pap.Graec.Mag. VII, I studied ink remains that correspond to the beginning of a column written on the verso of the papyrus that runs in the opposite direction to the rest of the te...

This article is part of an ongoing investigation into the meaning, origin and use of the augment in Early Greek prose and poetry and discusses the use and absence of the augment in the forms of the simplex ἔειπον/εἶπον in early epic Greek (Homer, Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns). I first explain why this verb was chosen and then proceed to determining the corpus. I start by listing the criteria to determine

The Alexander Romance depicts Alexander going alone to the court of Darius disguised as his own messenger, dining with the Persians and advancing his own reputation as a munificent king. This episode substitutes a fictional scene for a number of dramatic banqueting incidents in the historical record that cast Alexander in a negative light, specifically, the burning of Persepolis, the proskynesis affair

I argue that Moretum 70 uicinosque apte cura summittere riuos should be restored as uicinosque apte cultis [Heyne] inducere [scripsi] riuos.

The current article offers a new reading of Socrates’ prayer to Pan in Plato’s Phaedrus. By means of a comprehensive approach, the paper shows that the prayer not only gathers together the most relevant topics dealt with during the conversation but it also exhorts us to engage in the way of life depicted by Socrates’ character, namely that of philosophy, which can be clearly distinguished from that

In this article, we consider whether the form Βλήμενος ἦν in Il. 4.211 should be considered lexical or periphrastic. Based on a discussion of the context, an analysis of the usage of the verb βάλλω elsewhere in the Iliad, and an application of some generally accepted criteria of periphrasticity, we conclude that both interpretations are in fact possible. We connect this to the diachronic development

In this article, I offer a systematic description of the various uses of the preposition διά in the Early Byzantine archive of Qurrah ibn Sharik (VIII AD), an archive in which the preposition is attested remarkably frequently. Functionally, the use of διά is reminiscent of the Classical period, in that various older uses are attested that no longer occur in Modern Greek (such as PATH, INTERMEDIARY

Der vorliegende Aufsatz ist dem Gebrauch des sog. Nominativus Absolutus im Latein gewidmet. Es handelt sich dabei um ein partizipiales Syntagma im Nominativ, dessen grammatikalisches Subjekt anders als das des übergeordneten Satzes ist (z.B. Fulg. myth. 3,8 quam arborem pater gladio percutiens, Adon exinde natus est). Obwohl diese Konstruktion in zahlreichen, v.a. das Substandard- und Spätlatein betreffenden

The following paper is a paleographical study of PGM VI (P. Lond. I 47) and PGM II (P. Berol. inv. 5026) aiming to demonstrate that they belong to the same roll and contain the same magical text.

Papyrus fragments from a late-antique Greek magical handbook preserve a unique recipe that directs us to make a wax “voodoo doll” and pierce it with three bones – “the left one, the right one and the one from the back” – “of an eisphatēs”, a previously unknown Greek word that has been emended to mean “sacrificial victim” (sphaktēs) or “dove” (phattēs). Emendation is not warranted, however, because

I. The text of Ecl. 3.100–102 is discussed and evaluated: quam is defended against quom and Cartault’s proposal [1897. Étude sur les Bucoliques de Virgile. Paris: Armand Colin] Hisce cutes – not adopted by editors and hardly visible in later apparatus critici, but recommended as worthy of attention by Heyworth [2015. “Notes on the Text and Interpretation of Vergil’s Eclogues and Georgics.” In Virgilian

Eight conjectures are offered upon the text of Lucretius’ De rerum natura (1.912, 3.464, 586, 933, 962, 4.897, 5.888–889 and 6.365).

The following paper discusses the meaning of the word χοιροκομεῖον and its function in a passage in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata 1073. Although its semantics became obscure as early as the time of Pollux, it almost certainly originally referred to a wicker-work pigpen. The fact that in the Aristophanic passage under discussion the Spartan delegates are said to be wearing it around their thighs suggests

The ability to extract fully the contextualized interpretations of Michael Attaleiates’ Historia is a rather difficult task without the parallel study of sources chronicling the same period. This article reconsiders Attaleiates’ justification for the division of the army by Diogenes before the battle of Mantzikert in 1071, and argues that the author is as critical of this emperor’s strategy as his

The author looks at Vergil’s treatment of fors and forte and finds that forte sua at A. 1. 377 is not only exceptional, but most probably a corruption not least due to forte being used in the previous sentence. He conjectures instead sorte sua “due to its (namely the storm’s) own (special and arbitrary) law”.

Spätestens seit Löfstedts bekanntes Kapitel über nisi (1936, 29–35) weiß man, dass diese Konjunktion neben den in klassischer Zeit beinahe alleinherrschenden ausschließenden und einschränkenden Anwendungen („außer wenn“, „es sei denn, dass“, „ausgenommen“ u.Ä.; siehe unten 2) zumindest zwei seltenere Funktionen aufweist, welche sich namentlich in der späteren Latinität bemerkbar machen1. Es handelt

After a brief review of some of the general problems posed by Sophron’s work, the paper analyses Sophron’s fr. 3 K.-A., offering a detailed commentary and a new interpretation of the passage.

The author offers line 32 in a new form reading debita iura vicesque supernae (instead of the transmitted superbae): “due justice (debita iura) and heavenly retribution”.

In this article, Sappho’s Brothers Poem is re-evaluated and analysed from various perspectives that have not been addressed sufficiently in scholarship so far. First, some questions of principle regarding the role of the brothers and the Sapphic speaker are discussed. Secondly, the poem’s communicative situation is examined, and different options for the identification of the person addressed as “you”

Building on the classical tradition, which was strongly emulated in the Second Sophistic, Lucian used the katabasis motif (as we know it from, e.g., the Odyssey’s book 11) and staged various meetings in Hades. These Lucianic encounters were later rewritten by Byzantine authors who adapted them in order to express comical, critical, or subversive approaches towards power structures. In the present article

The structure and meaning of the passage are analysed, and its variants and textual proposals discussed. A way of understanding the text as transmitted is presented.

This article explores the overall meaning of Sappho's “Brothers' Poem” by elucidating its web of interwoven verbal repetitions. “The gods”, Sappho seems to say, “reward those who have moderate wishes, think in longer time frames by trying to exploit all their resources and understand the law of natural alternation, regulated by Zeus, by bringing about an even more spectacular reversal of fortune”.

The article examines the figure of Lampon, an uncharacteristic goatherd appearing in a folk-tale-like story in Xenophon’s Ephesiaca 2.9–12. It has long been recognized by critics that the circumstances of the Euripidean Electra are recalled in the episode under discussion. Comparisons are made with the Euripidean scene and the “reshuffling” of the main roles is expounded, including the novelist’s decision

Greek papyrus letters preserve not only instances of the replacement of the dative case; they also show the use of the dative instead of the accusative case as direct object and disjoint infinitival subject. This interchange is mostly found in epistolary phrases, namely the salutation formula (ἀσπάζομαί σε) and the initial (εὔχομαί σε ὑγιαίνειν) and final (ἐρρῶσθαί σε εὔχομαι) health wishes. The phonetic

The subject of this article is three pieces of elegiac Latin poetry, written in Trondheim by the mayor of the town, Niels Krog Bredal. The occasion for the poems were the transits of Venus occurring in the years 1761 and 1769, a rare phenomenon attracting considerable attention from natural philosophers of the Enlightenment and spurring numerous scientific expeditions across the globe. Bredal wrote