Classics

The Augustan elegy formally continued the tradition of the Alexandrian elegy, with its predilection for erotic themes and mythological plots. However, it diametrically changed the proportions: for the Alexandrian poet, a "subjective" frame for the elegy was only a starting point for the extensive narrative describing the love adventures of the heroes of the myths, whereas Roman elegists formed the main theme of their works from the individual love experience in its full scale of emotional and sensual dimensions. The concentration on the subject of poems' inner experiences and the entire domination of poetry by a personal tone makes a basic characteristic of the Roman elegy as represented by Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid. The antinomy between the objective and subjective attitude defines the essence of the artistic breakthrough which occurred at the decline of the Roman Republic, which was caused by the influence of the neoteric poets' aestethics, with Catullus in the forefront. In terms of fairly clear, although not free from some simplifications classification suggested by K. Quinn, 1 we can speak of the appearance of a literary concept referred to as the "Poet as Himself', which stood beside the already known concepts such as: the "Poet as Storyteller" (in historical epic and in drama) and the "Poet as a Teacher" (in didactic epic).

Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man. Homer Let us begin with this passage from Cicero: "Tradition says that Homer was blind; however, his work resembles more painting than poetry. Which is the region, the beach, the place in Greece, which is the kind of battle, army, navy and mobilization of men, which is the aspect and variety of animals that Homer does not paint for us, leading us to see what he himself did not see?" 1 Homer is the father of Western culture. 2 As for the controversy over Homer's existence ("One cannot be sure if Homer existed or not, but everybody knows that he was blind", as the saying goes), I echo Maurice Bowra's argument: there being no compelling reason not to, we are naturally led to accept that Homer existed. 3 One can still evoke these lines of Alexis Pierron: "The Odyssey, as well as the Iliad and much more than it, proves the existence of a poet, just as the Universe proves that of God". 4 In the Iliad, the scenario is mostly of centrifugal character: Greeks depart from different parts of Greece towards the Asian coasts of Troy; in the Odyssey, a centripetal dynamic prevails:

Sport in ancient Athens was much more than the Olympics

David. M. Pritchard 

It is true that the Olympic Games were also a really big deal in ancient Athens. The Athenians followed how sports stars performed at the Olympics as obsessively as we do. They likewise swelled with national pride when one of their own was proclaimed an Olympic victor. In the fifth and fourth centuries BC, they gave such a victor their topmost public honours. These were free daily banquets and free front-row seats at local games – both for life. 

Yet, sport in ancient Athens was much more than the Olympics. Physical education was a well-established discipline of the education of Athenian boys. Ancient Athens actually had more local games than any other Greek state. 

Every day, there, schoolboys went to the classes of a paidotribes or athletics teacher. Today, physical education during schooltime usually does not focus on competitive sports. Instead, serious training for such sports takes place outside school hours. By contrast, Athenian physical education was all about the sports common to the Olympics and other games.

An athletics teacher, who was often a former Olympic victor (figure 1), owned his own palaistra or wrestling school. There, he taught his classes in wrestling, boxing and the pankration, which was like our kickboxing (figure 2). For the other common competitive sports, a paidotribes took his students out to a gumnasion or sports field. Democratic Athens had three such public sporting facilities just outside the city-walls. These open spaces were ideal for training in the pentathlon as well as the four common footraces (figure 3).

The two other disciplines of male education were music and grammata or letters. Music included lessons in lyre playing and singing poetry. The grammatistes or letter teacher taught basic reading and writing as well as arithmetic.

The Athenian state never subsidised this traditional education. Therefore, it was always difficult for poor families to cover private school fees. Such families often also relied on their boys to keep farms or businesses going. The end result was that poor families could afford to educate their sons only in a single discipline.

The one that they chose was letters because it was of greater practical value for working people. Consequently, rich boys were the only ones in the classes of the paidotribes. In ancient Athens, about 5 percent of male citizens were rich. This meant that it was only a tiny elite that got serious training in competitive sports.

Competition at games in ancient Greece was truly fierce. There were 1000 Greek microstates in the Mediterranean basin. The sports stars in them all made a beeline for the Olympic Games. Even the local games that each Greek state put on attracted international competitors. A good example is the Great Panathenaea in which 50 percent of sportsmen were non-Athenian.

In the face of such fierce competition, an athlete who had not seriously trained would come in dead last. Poor Athenians, who had missed out on such school-based training, understandably decided not to enter games. Therefore, competing in sport was also a preserve of the social elite.

Ninety-five percent of ancient Athenians might have missed out on participation in sport. Nevertheless, they still considered athletics to be unambiguously good. The poor agreed that every boy should ideally go to the classes of an athletics teacher. In their eyes, such sports classes helped to turn boys into just and temperate adults. Poor Athenians felt no less positively about local games, seeing victory at them as commendable. The demos or people even made sure that no one criticised sports stars in public (figure 1). 

In democratic Athens, soldiers who did their duty were seen as the ultimate role models. In battles, they endured ponoi or toils as well as kindunoi or dangers. In accepting the possibility of death, soldiers proved their arete or courage. Another aspect of the high regard in which sportsmen were held is that they were judged to be comparable to such role models. Like soldiers, they, it was thought, also bore toils and dangers, always putting their courage beyond doubt. 

Ancient Athens was, famously, a direct democracy, in which poor citizens set the political agenda. This made it possible for the demos to turn their high regard of sport into pro-sport policies. Consequently, they voted to create the largest program of local games in ancient Greece. Festival-based contests could be athletic, musical or equestrian. In these 15 Athenian festivals, athletics featured much more often than musical or horse-based events. On this program, the demos spent a truly staggering 2.6 tons of silver each year.

The biggest games that the Athenians staged were the Great Panathenaea. This festival honoured Athena, who was their chief goddess, and was staged, like the Olympics, every 4 years. On it, the demos spent an incredible 650 kilograms of silver each time. This explains why the Great Panathenaea had twice as many contests as the Olympics. The Athenians awarded victors and placegetters huge amounts of olive oil in beautifully painted amphoras. Each Panathenaic amphora depicted Athena as a warrior on one side and a sporting event on the other (figure 2). 

The Great Panathenaea had all the common competitive sports for men and horses. But it had too surprising numbers of events for musicians and dancers as well as for soldiers and sailors. A good example of such war-related contests was the race for ten warships (figure 4). Athenian soldiers were also a big part of the Panathenaic procession, which was depicted on the Parthenon frieze.

Most years saw the ancient Athenians also stage at Eleusis local games for Demeter and Persephone. These two goddesses were considered to be most responsible for good harvests. It was thus quite appropriate that athletes there competed for sacks of grain. At Marathon, every four years, there were games for Heracles, who, it was thought, had founded the Olympics.

The Athenian demos actually considered those fellow citizens who had died in war to be demi-gods (figure 5). Contests were a standard act of worship for demi-gods and gods alike. Each year, Athens thus staged local games for the war dead, for which the prizes were bronze pots.

Today, the torch relay is a cherished ritual of our Olympics. But there was never any such relay at the ancient Games. The closest ancient parallel is a contest that took place at 4 Athenian festivals: the relay race for runners carrying a torch.

It is truly remarkable that poor Athenians were so pro-sport in spite of never being sportsmen. A big reason was that local games brought them much terpsis or delight. As a games spectator, an Athenian got a holiday, watched gripping races or bouts, and enjoyed a free picnic. For the sake of such picnics, the demos constantly voted to expand sacrifices at local games. By the 320s BC, the state was sacrificing 1300 cows each year.

However, the biggest reason for this pro-sport stance was the close association of sport and war. The ancient Athenians waged almost nonstop wars. In their eyes, war was unambiguously good and always brought huge benefits. Sport being closely associated with war could thus only increase the regard that the demos had for it. Nonelite Athenians believed that sportsmen bore toils as much as they did when fighting wars. This meant that they also had a strong personal affinity for what sportsmen did.

David M. Pritchard is an ancient historian at the University of Queensland in Australia and the author of Sport, Democracy and War in Classical Athens (Cambridge University Press). These are excerpts from a public lecture that he will be delivering at the Brisbane Greek Festival on 17 May 2025.

Figure captions:

Figure 1: This is the thanks offering that an Olympic victory from Athens left for Athena at her sanctuary at Sunium (National Archaeological Museum [Athens], inv. no. 3344). Photo courtesy of Hans Goette.

Figure 2: Depicted on this Panathenaic amphora is an athlothetes or games-organiser umpiring the kickboxing contest at the Great Panathenaea (Metropolitan Museum of Art [New York], inv. no. 16.71).

Figure 3: This Athenian wine cup depicts an athletics teacher training students in two events of the pentathlon (Powerhouse Museum [Sydney], inv. no. 99/117/1). Photo: Ryan Hernandez.

Figure 4: Athenian rowers are depicted on this victory monument for the race of warships at the Great Panathenaea (Acropolis Museum [Athens], inv. no. 1339). Photo courtesy of Hans Goette.

Figure 5: This was part of the public tomb for Athenian war dead from the Corinthian War (National Archaeological Museum [Athens], inv. no. 2744). Photo courtesy of Hans Goette.

Petridou, G. (2024) ‘Between Pergamum, Athens, and Eleusis: Illness and Initiation in Aelius Aristides’, in G. Woolf, I. Bultrighini, and C. Norman (Eds.), Sanctuaries and Experience: Knowledge, Practice and Space in the Ancient World, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 369-394.

Pain is a strange beast. The assessment and understanding of pain presents the greatest of challenges for students of pain and patient history (ancient and modern alike). The lived experience of pain evades the historian of disability, the ancient historian, and the archaeologist. It often eludes even the palaeopathologist, who might be able to recognise the physical markers of an ancient ailment on human remains but misses altogether the pervasiveness of chronic suffering in the individual’s lived experience and relationships. Even modern pain specialists, who rely exclusively on quantitative neuroscientific tools, such as fMRI results, for the exploration of pain cannot quite fully comprehend nor qualify its impact on the everyday life of the individual sufferer(s). This study targets narrative strategies and the individual experience of pain in the ancient world, with an extra focus on gout-induced pain in the first and second centuries CE. To that end, this chapter surveys key literary and epigraphic
evidence from this period. The main aim is to showcase the high impact
that gout-related pain has on the ‘lived bodies’ of sufferers.

This paper looks afresh at the socio-religious practice of gift-giving to the divine in the critical context of illness. In terms of methodology, this study draws inspiration from Rosa’s sociological theory of resonant self–world relations and its strong emphasis on bodily relationships,  as well as on recent studies on embodiment and visual culture,  lived religion,  and monumentality.  It also brings together my earlier research interest in the concept of the ‘lived body’,  as well as current research work on bodily fragmentation, fusion, and trans-formation, pursued in the context of the ‘De/Constructing the Body: Ancient and Modern Dynamics’ project.
More specifically, this paper offers a comparative study between modern Greek anatomical tamata (‘dedications’ in Modern Greek) and ancient Greek anathemata (‘dedications’ in ancient Greek) in terms of their magnitude, materiality, and the meanings ascribed to them by their dedicants. The comparison reveals a paradoxical coexistence of processes of miniaturization and magnification in both Antiquity and modernity, which is central to the meaning-making mechanisms of these objects. Despite both types of objects being effectively miniaturized versions of human bodies or body parts (internal and external alike), they exercise monumental power in the eyes of both the dedicants and the deities to whom they are offered. This last premise is fleshed out further by a close comparison between modern and ancient eye-shaped tamata dedicated to St Paraskevi and the analogously shaped ancient Greek anathemata dedicated to Demeter and Kore.

« Ophtalmologie divine : de Sainte Paraskevi à Déméter et Korè» : Cet article compare les objets votifs grecs modernes et antiques liés aux maladies ophtalmologiques. il examine le rôle et la typologie des tamata (« objets votifs » en grec moderne) dans le culte de guérison chrétien de sainte Paraskevi en Grèce moderne, et donne un bref aperçu d'autres saintes chrétiennes qui président à la vue et sont en lien étroit avec la lumière. en outre, cette étude examine les offrandes en forme d'oeil (anathemata en grec ancien) trouvées dans les temples dédiés à déméter et à Coré. « Comparer l'incomparable » permet une analyse ad fontes de la perception de la maladie ophtalmologique et de la pluralité régionale des cultes de guérison. en outre, cela autorise une discussion fructueuse sur le contexte culturel propre à la santé et à la maladie ophtalmologique. abstract : this chapter compares modern and ancient Greek votives related to ophthalmological illness. it discusses the role and typology of tamata ('votives' in modern Greek) in the Christian healing cult of st Paraskevi in modern Greece, along with a brief survey of other Christian female saints who preside over eyesight and their close connection to light. Moreover, this study examines ancient Greek eye-shaped votives (anathemata in ancient Greek), which were found in temples dedicated to demeter and Kore. 'Comparing the incomparables' , this paper argues, allows for an ad fontes analysis of the lived experience of ophthalmological illness and of the regional diversity of healing cults. Moreover, it allows for a fruitful discussion of the culture-specific framing of ophthalmological health and illness.

Petridou, G. and Rüpke, J. (2021) ‘The Impact of Textual Production on the Organisation and Proliferation of Religious Knowledge in the Roman Empire’ , in J. Rüpke and G. Woolf (eds.), Religion in the Roman Empire, Kohlhammer Verlag, Die Religionen der Menschkeit Bd 16.2, 234-261.

This study calls for a reconsideration of the infused with mystery
imagery and terminology narratives in the Hieroi Logoi (henceforth
HL), and argues that a close and careful re-examination of this
rich material may yield valuable information not only regarding Aristides’
conception of the Pergamene cult in the Imperial Era, but also
of the way medical art (technē iatrikē) was conceptualised by other
members of the socio-political elite in the second century AD. If
placed in its proper socio-cultural context, I maintain, Aristides’ propensity
to recast Asclepius’ healing cult in terms of a mystery cult of
the highest order can reveal deeper more meaningful conceptual links
between Imperial mystery cults and healing cults.

Hero of Alexandria, likely a contemporary of the Roman emperor Nero, is one of the many ancient Greek authors whose work, for us, represents a whole tradition of ancient thought-in this case, mechanics. Anyone who has ever ventured into the five stately Teubner volumes collecting his writings (plus a halo of fragments and an extensive Near Eastern transmission) has, however, perhaps experienced a certain feeling of being helpless in the vast expanse of texts mostly starring tubes, wheels, diagrams, and numbers. Now there is relief. In The Mechanical Tradition of Hero of Alexandria, Courtney Ann Roby provides us with, as far as I can see, the first monographic guide to the Corpus Heronicum. Roby describes the corpus as "a system of interlocking information flows" (17), which is a fitting image for the corpora of a number of ancient authors, including the medical author Galen and the geographer Strabo (and certainly too for the book under review). Roby's book is divided into three parts. The first (chapters 2-3) explores how Hero presents and solves technical problems, drawing from a long tradition that he transforms and codifies for intellectual engineers at least up to the Renaissance. The second part (chapter 4) is structured as a thought experiment. Roby hypothetically imagines three historical contexts-Ptolemaic, Early Roman, and later Imperial Alexandria-and explores which aspects of Hero's corpus would align with each of these settings. This experimental framework enables Roby to engage with the entire tradition of Greek theoretical mechanics and applied mathematics. The third part (chapter 5) offers a succinct survey of Hero's impact on the Renaissance and the seventeenth century, tracing his works and concepts through a beautiful stream of names, places, and baroque frontispieces. Hero's treatises span various fields, including mechanics in general (extant in Arabic), seemingly self-moving devices ("automata"), machines powered by air or water pressure, ballistic machines, instruments for topographic measurements, applied mathematics, systems of measurement, a commentary on Euclid's Elements, and mathematical definitions. With many of these texts, he supersedes predecessors such as Philon or Ctesibius, who only occasionally come up as names; thus, he often comes close to developing disciplinary microhistories, even in texts like the Metrica. Roby identifies Euclid's Elements as Hero's model of textual organization. Therefore, we can take Hero to construct a "geometry of machines" (as Karin Tybjerg 2004, 50 has put it), a textual model, however, that he transformed. Roby excels in highlighting Hero's didactic strategies, which seem to adapt and vary mathematical traditions. At the heart of these traditions is the desire to explain-in Hero's case, to explain the mechanics of the world around us, inviting readers to see the world in a new way (a sentiment evident in the Ps.-Aristotelian Mechanical Problems, a possible origin of the tradition of mechanical writing). One of the lead differences that guides Roby's approach to Hero, is the one between "practical and theoretical", which here often coincides with the one of "materials vs. mathematics." Roby's Hero helps us observe, analyze and construct objects in the world, that is, he tries to teach us how to handle both categories, the one of material and the one of mathematics, and provides us with a "mixed" approach to theōria. Hero's focus on practical problem-solving sets him apart from Archimedes, positioning his use of mathematical features more as a rhetorical strategy.

The genre of metapoetry thematizes the fictional elements – the inspiration of a poet, his poetic process, meta-poetic metaphors, the role of the poet in society, and intertextual references – partaking in the making of poetry explicitly or implicitly carried through a poem within a poem technique. This paper presents Eva Müller-Zettlemann’s theoretical pronunciation of meta-poetic elements, i. e., poetic inspiration, poetic process, and meta-poetic metaphors, at play in the metalyrics of Taufiq Rafat from his anthologies Arrival of the Monsoon: Collected Poems 1947-78 (1985) and Half Moon: Poems 1979-1983 (2008). Rafat’s inspiration is the South-Asian terra firma and lived experience that makes him infuse the regional sensibility through a poetic process of perceiving and penning down immediately. His meta-poetic metaphor involves the invention of an image of cultural genesis that informs the process of poetic creativity. Moreover, the study also considers the explicit expression o...

Alexander the Great was firmly entrenched in imaginaries of Roman ruling elites, from Scipio Africanus to the Roman emperor Caracalla and beyond.  This paper considers Polybius’ representations of the Macedonian conqueror and their impact on Roman elites, who were just beginning to formulate their ideas about Alexander and his significance to the history of the imperium Romanum and of the world, as Polybius was writing his work.  The historian’s generally positive assessment of Alexander, not without its ambiguities, is aligned with the generally positive Roman reconstruction of him, though again not without reservations.  A proper understanding of Polybius’ treatment of Alexander, however, turns on a more parochial perspective, highlighting Polybius’ own political position vis-à-vis Macedonia, Polybian didacticism, and a large narrative trajectory of the Histories.

A comprehensive edition with transliterations, translations of and extensive commentaries on the chronicles, the historical sections of the astronomical diaries, the Uruk King List, The Babylonian King List and the Antiochus cylinder dating to the Hellenistic period (including the Late Achaemenid period and the Parthian period to 22 BCE). An Appendix with a glossary of topics is added. The introductory pages are uploaded here.

Particularly since the seminal work of Christian Meier, there has been an influential line of thought that the Roman sociopolitical elite simply lacked the imagination to engage in forward-looking reforms, the sort that might have resolved or mitigated the tensions that eventually caused the violent implosion of the Roman Republic. On the basis of a close analysis of key episodes in the Republic's history, this study instead posits that it was rather a matter of conscious reform unwillingness (sections 1-3). It subsequently seeks to break new ground by explaining the Roman aristocracy's reform unwillingness and the ensuing tremendous political costs by drawing on the recent empiricist political science frameworks developed by Barbara Walter and Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (sections 4 and 5). It argues that the Roman senatorial aristocracy went down a destructive political path because it deeply feared the loss of status and elite agency that might flow from certain reforms, compounded by the fear of a better resourced and more powerful state apparatus falling into the hands of aspiring tyrants. Next, the steep political costs of this fear-driven reform unwillingness are appraised: conservative and more progressive aristocratic factions alike descending into increasingly violent and deadly tit-for-tat games of 'constitutional hardball', sacrificing the guardrails of the Roman political system (mutual toleration and forbearance), resulting in the rise of factionalism and the loss of hope/faith in the traditional political process. The senatorial aristocracy's scorched-earth fight against undesirable reforms arguably put the Republic on the road to autocracy as its tacticsquickly adopted by their political opponentsdemonstrably displayed all four key indicators of authoritarian behaviour. The epilogue, then, offers some possible lessons for the 21 st century.

Representan una generación, porque su infancia o juventud coincide con la dictadura de Sila (81-79 a. C.) y mueren entre las batallas de Farsalia (48 a. C.) y la de Accio (31 a. C.)  Muchos procedieron de la Galia Transpadana  Dejan el modelo de Ennio y lo buscan en los poetas de la literatura griega más reciente, la de los Alejandrinos como Euforión de Calcis (275-200 a. C.); Calímaco (310-240 a. C.); Arato (310-240 a. C.); Apolonio de Rodas (295-215 a. C.)  Se puede decir que cultivan un "arte por el arte" en el que la elevada expresión lírica no mira para nada afuera del poeta y su texto.  Búsqueda de motivos remotos o exóticos  Selecta erudición en el vocabulario y la métrica  Descripción de elementos pequeños, elaboración atildada de las vivencias personales más cotidianas  El nombre les fue dado por Cicerón:

En este artículo nos proponemos estudiar el marco o los marcos predicativos básicos 1 de uerto, analizando las Funciones Semánticas (FS) de todos sus argumentos y satélites del primer nivel, en un corpus de referencia constituido por las obras de Ovidio y Livio. Estos dos autores son los que presentan mayor variedad y riqueza de empleos de este verbo 2 . Numminem 1938 es de los pocos que han estudiado tangencialmente el marco predicativo de uerto 3 . Según el OLD 1996, págs. 2042-2045, este -------* Este trabajo se enmarca en los proyectos de investigación PB 97-0005-C04-02 y BFF 2001-0195-CO4-02 de la DGICYT. Agradecemos a los miembros del equipo investigador que los lleva a cabo todas las sugerencias hechas. 1 Según Pinkster 1995, pág. 2, «La razón por la que se debe asignar al predicado un carácter e importancia especiales es precisamente que el número de constituyentes obligatorios y el tipo de éstos depende específicamente del predicado... Según cuál sea su significado, un predicado crea un número de posiciones o casillas para los constituyentes que tienen una función semántica específica con respecto al predicado. Cada predicado tiene un marco predicativo particular (o en ciertas circunstancias varios marcos predicativos)». 2 Cf. OLD y Numminem 1938, pág. 70. 3 El verbo sólo es mencionado en las gramáticas de la lengua latina de Bassols y Kühner-Stegmann en el apartado dedicado a la voz verbal. Respecto al verbo tornar, muy usado en castellano medieval y con una gran riqueza constructiva, Suárez Fernández 1999, págs. 311 y

In this paper we derive analytic expressions for the value of European Put and Call options when the stock process follows an exponential Lévy-Stable process. It is shown that the generalised Black-Scholes operator for the Lévy-Stable case can be obtained as an asymptotic approximation of a process where the random variable follows a Damped-Lévy process. Finally, it is also shown that option prices under the Lévy-Stable case generate the volatility smile encountered in the financial markets when the Black-Scholes framework is employed.

In this study, two new inscriptions preserved in the garden of Kalecik Municipality
in Kalecik District of Ankara Province are introduced. One of the inscriptions was
identified by the Anatolian Civilizations Museum during research conducted in Kalecik
in 2019 and was placed in the open-air display area in front of Kalecik Municipality. It is
the epitaph of Aurelius Helios, dated to 228 AD. This inscription identifies the previously
unknown village of Ōnoukōme and the region named ALEBONŌN (Alebona?) in
Kalecik. The second one is thought to be a supplication to God. The inscription contains
meaningless letter combinations used to capture the listener's attention in the invocation
to the father of the light repository part of Pistis Sophia, a Gnostic text dated to the 3rd-
4th centuries AD. Additionally, it includes expressions composed of these combinations
found in the magical texts believed to belong to Mithras, preserved in the National Library
of France, in a broad codex referred to as the Greek Magical Papyri, also dated to
the 3rd century AD.

Este ensayo mapea las coordenadas de Elena Ferrante como un fenómeno literario global y, en particular, en relación con la disciplina de los estudios clásicos y la construcción de la personalidad autoral de Ferrante dentro de la tradición literaria clásica. Además, explora figuras femeninas recurrentes que Ferrante toma prestadas del mito griego, creando de hecho su propia mitología femenina. Este proceso es examinado en el libro infantil de Ferrante La muñeca olvidada (2007), una historia sobre una muñeca abandonada en la playa que reconfigura el mito de Ariadna. Al observar La muñeca olvidada a través de los lentes del mito griego, el ensayo argumenta que los textos de Ferrante no solo absorben y revisan a autores masculinos clásicos, sino que también reinventan figuras femeninas abandonadas de la tradición grecorromana. Son sus historias, filtradas a través de la encarnación de una subjetividad femenina, las que habitan sus textos, generando mitologías nuevas y modernas sobre las mentes y los cuerpos de las mujeres, sobre las madres y las hijas, la feminidad y la agencia.

This essay maps the coordinates of Elena Ferrante as a global literary phenomenon and in particular, in relation to the discipline of Classics and the construction of Ferrante’s authorial persona within the Classical literary tradition. It further explores recurring female figures that Ferrante borrows from Greek myth, in effect creating her own feminine mythology. This process is examined in Ferrante’s children’s book La spiaggia di notte (2007), the story of a doll abandoned on the beach which reconfigures the myth of Ariadne. By looking at La spiaggia di nottte through the lens of Greek myth, the essay argues that Ferrante’s texts not only absorb and revise classical male authors, but also reimagine abandoned female figures from the Greco-Roman tradition. It is their stories, filtered through an embodied female subjectivity, that inhabit her texts, engendering new, modern, mythologies about women’s minds and bodies, about mothers and daughters, femininity, and agency.

No scene which presents itself to the imagination excites greater pathos than that of Socrates sitting on his prison couch and cheerfully drinking his cup of poison. Long after the reader has forgotten the wandering maze of arguments in Plato's Phaedo, he carries fixed in his mind the heroism of Socrates during his last day, his persistence in pursuing difficult arguments, and the nobility with which he meets his death. And Plato has achieved his aim, for the dialogue is not about the immortality of the soul -indeed, the arguments, as gen- erally recognized, are unsuccessful -no, the dialogue is about the heroic death of Socrates and the proposition that only the philoso- pher -as epitomized in the person of Socrates -can meet death heroically.' For only the philosopher knows that he cannot know about the afterlife and the soul, and he is thus the only one who can die courageously. The Phaedo shows, perhaps more than any other dialogue, how ' Cf. Paul Friedlander {Plato, Vol. I, tr. Hans MeyerhofF [Princeton 1969], p. 122), who says that all the Platonic dialogues are ultimately encomia to Socrates. Nietzsche too saw the figure of Socrates as charismatic or inspirational. Hans-Georg Gadamer {Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato, tr. P. Christopher Smith [New Haven and London 1980], p. 22) writes: "As Nietzsche has so aptly put it, this figure of the dying Socrates became the new ideal to which the noblest of the Greek youth now dedicated themselves instead of to that older heroic ideal, Achilles. Thus the Phaedo's poetic power to convince is stronger than its logical power to prove." brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Illinois Digital Environment for... ' On a similar joke on memory, see Meno 7lc and the discussion of the joke in William S. Cobb, Jr., "Anamnesis: Platonic Doctrine or Sophistic Absurdity?" Dialogue 12 (1973), 604-28. ^And, of course, the theory of recollection is mired in the problem of infinite regress (i.e., whence the original knowledge?). See Cobb, esp. pp. 619-21. '''

The researcher traces the form of clothing that prevailed in the prehistoric era through the Chinese, Egyptian, Mesopotamia, Greek, and Roman civilizations. The researcher follows the descriptive analytical approach to the form of clothing in these civilizations, and for different classes of society, does not forget the functional aspect of these clothes. Ancient societies viewed fashion as a sign of riches and high social standing. The researcher reached some results that enrich the research topic, as he found that the first and last goal of manufacturing and designing these clothes was not for the aesthetic aspect, but for the functional aspect, whether these functions were social, military, or climatic. For example, clothes in ancient Egypt were made from sheep wool, goat hair, and palm fronds. While Greek clothes were made of linen and wool, Roman clothes are an extension of Greek clothes and were characterized by the (Toga and Picta), while Chinese clothes were characterized by silk, such as the (Haifu). The researcher concluded that the clothing industry varied in form and function from one civilization to another and was subject to the cultural aspects of these civilizations.

Representations of fear in Polybius' Histories constitute a special case in ancient Greek and Roman historiography. For many ancient historians depicting fear was an opportunity to showcase skills in literary style and rhetorical virtuosity. By contrast, Polybius was a selfavowed 'anti-stylist' who loathed such ornamentation. This study examines the theme of fear in Polybius' history, its role in his lived experience and interstate environment, his rejection of rhetorical flourishes in depicting fear, and his personal political circumstances and self-appointed role as fearless educator and advisor of Roman power elites.

Readers of history judge historians for what they say. But what about historians' silences, what they have left unsaid? Giving attention to this dimension of an historian's writing can pay rich dividends. By looking at specific omissions we may gain understanding about what historians wanted us to believe, how they attempted to manipulate their readers, and how they arranged their narratives to achieve their objectives. In this chapter, I pursue this line of inquiry concerning the history of the Greek historian Polybius. As a political hostage at Rome, Polybius necessarily offered a foreigner's perspective on Roman imperial power. Despite his well-deserved reputation as an ancient historian of the first order 1 , several bewildering aspects of his treatment of Rome, especially in the sixth book, have not received the careful attention they deserve: 1) Polybius ignores the significance of allied forces in the Roman army in Book 6; 2) he presents a simplistic picture of a monolithic Senate united in its foreign policy decisions during the Hannibalic war; 3) he is silent on political disturbances in Rome surrounding the levy of military recruits at the midpoint of the second century BCE; and 4) he misrepresents Roman elites' religious practices. No one, to the best of my knowledge, has ever considered these suppressions, inconsistences, distortions, and silences together as evidence for the historian's politically motivated narrative strategies. In general terms, Polybius' historiographical solution to the problem of Roman hegemony for Greek political elites was one of blending-that is to say, the cultural assimilation

This paper argues four main points: 1) Polybius does not dwell on horrors of war, the insane chaos and unpredictable nature of battle, and terrifying experiences of rank-and-file soldiers in combat.  2) Warfare primarily interests him as a rational, chess-board affair, showcasing skills or weaknesses of power elites serving as field commanders.  3) While non-Greeks, such as Hannibal and Scipio Africanus, are masters of command, military science in Polybius’ narrative is mainly the preserve of Greeks, and he stresses that outnumbered possessors of Greek λογισμός have overcome vast numbers of mindless and impulsive barbarian hordes.  Romans, as honorary Greeks, can continue to do so if they will follow Polybius’ precepts. And (4), as intrusive, editorializing, first-person narrator, Polybius qua military scientist (we should remember that he wrote a lost Tactica), emerges as educator and advisor for elite Roman field generals who will read his history.

This work is a reconstruction, not only of a Roman artifact, but of a way of seeing. What began as a study of an obscure parapegma fragment, etched in plaster near the Baths of Trajan, revealed itself to be more than a calendrical device. It is a cipher. A voice. A signal across time. This paper bridges disciplines: archaeology, philology, astronomy, cryptography, and symbolic linguistics. But more than that, it invites a way of reading through layers, physical, mythic, and mnemonic. We offer this analysis not as a final word, but as a door opened. To those trained to read parts, to leap between symbols, this document is an invitation to remember.

Felieton stanowi krótkie omówienie różnych audycji radiowych w których autor popularyzuje wiedzę. Omówione są bardzo krótkie (2 minuty!) pogadanki popularnonaukowe emitowane dwa razy w tygodniu (wtorki i czwartki) około 9:10 rana w radiu RMF Classic. Audycje te są też dostępne na stronie tego radia jako podcasty. Są też omówione audycje, które są emitowane raz w tygodniu w ramach programów "W kręgu nauki" na antenie Radia Kraków. Te mogą trwać dłużej, około 10 minut, chociaż bywa, że na ciekawsze tematy można poświęcić nawet 20 minut. Są ona także dostępne stale w Internecie, więc warto skorzystać.

Nuove prospettive di ricerca per antiche questioni teoriche a cura di Federica Piangerelli il giogo 162 Collana diretta da Luca Grecchi Prometeo legato alla colonna con Atlante che regge il cielo, VI secolo a.C. «ıpou gàr 'scùV suzugoüsi kaì díkh, poía xunwrìV tÖnde karterwtéra;». «Infatti, dove forza e giustizia sono allo stesso giogo, quale coppia è più valorosa di questi?».

Flavi Ludus is an award-winning Latin poem by Luigi Galante (1877–1926), magna laus at the Certamen Hoeufftianum in Amsterdam in 1918. It has hardly been studied properly, though it brings together many of the themes which Véronique Dasen’s has pursued during her scholarly career: agency of the educator (the schoolteacher), children preferring play over work at
school, and a child prodigy who fancies the beauty of nature and art. This article will bring together philological analysis with socio-cultural history of antiquity and intellectual history / history of ideas of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Italy.

Here is a valuable work: the first full commentary on the Iliad in one very handy volume, with I think all the useful bibliography, at least for the works available in English. It should involve the entire academic public, students and teachers, for a somewhat in-depth approach to the Homeric epic. On condition that non-English speaking teachers supplement the bibliographical reference arsenal with data from their linguistic field, it seems to me to provide the necessary information in a very accessible form (Paperback volume of reasonable weight, it also exists in bound form). After the introduction by the editor, the well-known specialist of homeric comparisons Jonathan Ready, each song of the Iliad is entrusted to a different author, all specialists of Homer in one title or another, so that no chapter seemed irrelevant. The list of contributors is at the end of the volume. A song and an author per chapter, this ensures a certain diversity. But the structure of each chapter is identical for each song: summary; study of the topics covered; poetics; list of themes related to other passages in the Iliad; essential bibliographical references. This aspect is obviously crucial for the rational use of the public, both teachers and students. I will of course comment on each chapter more closely, but first I would like to say that the the only point of criticism I would have to make in this general plan is the place given to the summaries-half a page to three printed pages-compared to articles of about ten pages on average, seems excessive, given that summaries are found almost everywhere in the school editions of the Iliad, and that abstracts can encourage students to dispense with a full reading, in which only, in my opinion, is what Barthes called the "pleasure of the text". Commentary on song 1, by Mary Bachvarova: the conflict of the Iliad is a conflict of words, eris, between two leaders of the same camp causing the anger of Achilles, mēnis; the poetics of this song organized around the fundamental orality of the poem, of the minimal compositional unit that is the formula to the typical scene, presenting in an allusive form a rich legendary background (fight of the Lapiths against the Centaurs, sacrifice of the daughter of Agamemnon, rescue by Thetes of Zeus prisoner of the other gods) ; second time devoted to comparative parallels that include the Iliad in an Indo-European context. Rachel Friedmann, chant 2: themes of the dream, of the dissension in the Achean army and the consequent threat, presentation of Ulysses as a good king in contrast to the ineptitude of Agamemnon and character of Thersite with a name that speaks; for the poetic, good analysis of the comparisons that punctuate the stages of the movement of the army, and mark the presence of the poet. The Catalogue of ships is poetic, the call to the Muse who introduced it and the story of the aedium Thamyris, punished for his claim to compete with the Muses, are proof.

PID_00190579 CC-BY-NC-ND • PID_00190579 El Renaixement i l'humanisme (segles XIV-XVI) Els textos i imatges publicats en aquesta obra estan subjectes -llevat que s'indiqui el contrari-a una llicència de Reconeixement-NoComercial-SenseObraDerivada (BY-NC-ND) v.3.0 Espanya de Creative Commons. Podeu copiar-los, distribuir-los i transmetre'ls públicament sempre que en citeu l'autor i la font (FUOC. Fundació per a la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya), no en feu un ús comercial i no en feu obra derivada. La llicència completa es pot consultar a legalcode.ca

Asmaa Azaizeh est une poétesse palestinienne, qui fut aussi la première directrice du Musée Mahmoud Darwich à Ramallah lors de sa création en 2012. Les poèmes suivants sont traduits de son recueil de 2019 "Ne croyez pas ce que je dis quand je parle de la guerre" à partir de la traduction suédoise de Jasim Mohamed parue aux éditions Rámus la même année.

During his labour confinement in the far North, Joseph Brodsky formulated his poetic credo as 'normal classicism' (see To a Certain Poetess, 1965). This chapter explores the significance of this artistic belief in the Soviet context after Stalin, where the state had an absolute and exclusive monopoly on setting norms for all manifestations of public and even private life, including art. It posits that Brodsky's interpretation of classicism was diametrically opposed to the aesthetics of Socialist Classicism. While Stalin's socialism, as with Italian and German fascisms, had used the label to convey solidity to the monolithic stasis of its utopian political projects, Brodsky saw classicism as a common matrix of 'world culture'-the concept passed onto him by his poetic predecessor and model Osip Mandelstam. The chapter argues that Mandelstam's and later Brodsky's insistence on 'world culture' was a form of aesthetic protest, as it stood in stark contrast with the official programme in Stalinist as well as post-Stalinist Russia-a country that had insulated itself from the rest of the world, severing most of its intellectual and material ties with the West. Conversely, for both Mandelstam and later Brodsky, antiquity became absolutely central as it represented the idea of cultural continuity, the uninterrupted link of times, and the unity of culture. The chapter then proceeds to show that the poets of Brodsky's generation suffered the effects of 'cultural disinheritance'-a feeling of being isolated from the repositories of Western culture, a burden shared by the artists from the Soviet Bloc. To overcome this cultural disinheritance Brodsky and his counterparts taught themselves Polish, as after 1956, censorship restrictions in Poland became significantly less rigid than in Russia. The chapter then conducts comparative close readings of poems by Brodsky and by the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998), which use themes and tropes from classical antiquity, discovering similarities in their use of classical themes and imagery, including a shared use of Aesopian language and irony. The chapter concludes that, for Brodsky, the Polish poets and, in particular, Herbert, became the gatekeepers not only to Western culture, but also to classical antiquity.

A MORE CONSERVATIVE attitude to the colometry of manu- scripts ought to have received a substantial impetus from the publication in 1954 of Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 2236, with its stimulating fragments from the recognition duet of Helen and Menelaos in the ever puzzling Helena of Euripides. This papyrus is assigned to the late first century B.C., age of the chalcenteric Didymus, and the sole independent witness for the play among the Byzantine MSS is L, Laurentianus 32.2, dated by its watermarks and otherwise to the second decade of the fourteenth century. Yet there is almost complete agreement on colometry between the two documents, written some fourteen centuries apart. This was first seen by Professor Gunther Zuntz;l and the general conclusion is well expressed by Professor A. M. Dale in her edition of the play in 1967 (p.170): It has long been held that one of the chief arguments for the descent of all our medieval MSS. from an authoritative Alexandrian edition, the work of Aristophanes of Byzantium, is their general agreement in lyric colometry; in such a daunting complexity of material, the key to which was for so long completely lost, the influence of this first great systematic ordering must have been paramount. L P show little more divergence from II [the Helena papyrus] in this respect than they do (when Triclinius's alterations are removed) from M A B V in the Select Plays; that is to say, colome try is, on the whole, the same, with a few minor discrepancies. 2 t Professor Young died suddenly at Chapel Hill on 24 October 1973. This final essay has been seen through press by his admiring friends, the editors. 1 Professor Gunther Zuntz appears to have been the first to observe publicly that the cola•divisions in papyri and mediaeval MSS of Euripides are, by and large, identical, and that this must go back to Aristophanes of Byzantium. He did so in a lecture at the University of London Institute of Classical Studies in November 1960. in the presence of Professor A. M. Dale and Dr W. S. Barrett.