Phaethon in Ovid and Nonnus

1988 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 536-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter E. Knox
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Common Source ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Source Criticism ◽  
Shared Feature ◽  
Literal Translation ◽  
Abundant Evidence

Among the artifacts produced by nineteenth-centuryQuellenforschung, few have exerted more influence or endured more censure than the lost Hellenistic epyllion which, as reconstructed by G. Knaack, told of the journey of Phaethon to the palace of the sun-god and his disastrous ride in the solar car. Relying chiefly upon the two versions of the story told by Ovid in hisMetamorphoses(1.747–2.398) and Nonnus in theDionysiaca(38.105–434), and applying techniques comparable to the stemmatic method of textual criticism, Knaack traced every shared feature of these two accounts to the inevitable lost Hellenistic ‘original’. Details from Lucian (Dial. Deor.25) and Philostratus (Imag.1.11), who were also presumed to have read this lost poem, helped to fill in the blanks. Knaack's thesis illustrates the extremes of which source criticism was capable at a time when it was naively assumed that Roman poets were capable of little more than literal translation of their Greek models. In the early part of this century, a reaction set in against Knaack's method, when it was alleged that there was no common source for the two poets and that Nonnus derived his account of Phaethon directly from his reading of Ovid. The case was first made by J. Braune, who examined four episodes common to both works – Phaethon, Cadmus, Actaeon, and Daphne – and argued that correspondences between the two are due to imitation of Ovid by Nonnus. Braune's arguments did not win complete acceptance; it is noteworthy that even his supporters were not entirely convinced by three of his four test passages, for which abundant evidence survives of sources earlier than Ovid.

The Dupont family: collectors, dealers and naturalists in nineteenth-century Paris

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Mearns ◽  
Laurent Chevrier ◽  
Christophe Gouraud
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Family History ◽  
Natural History ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Anatomical Models ◽  
The Family ◽  
Small Collection

In the early part of the nineteenth century the Dupont brothers ran separate natural history businesses in Paris. Relatively little is known about their early life but an investigation into the family history at Bayeux corrects Léonard Dupont's year of birth from 1795 to 1796. In 1818 Léonard joined Joseph Ritchie's expedition to North Africa to assist in collecting and preparing the discoveries but he did not get beyond Tripoli. After 15 months he came back to Paris with a small collection from Libya and Provence, and returned to Provence in 1821. While operating as a dealer-naturalist in Paris he published Traité de taxidermie (1823, 1827), developed a special interest in foreign birds and became well known for his anatomical models in coloured wax. Henry Dupont sold a range of natural history material and with his particular passion for beetles formed one of the finest collections in Europe; his best known publication is Monographie des Trachydérides (1836–1840). Because the brothers had overlapping interests and were rarely referred to by their forenames there has been confusion between them and the various eponyms that commemorate them. Although probably true, it would be an over-simplification to state that birds of this era named for Dupont refer to Léonard Dupont, insects to Henry Dupont, and molluscs to their mother.

Nguyễn Công Trứ at the court of Minh Mạng

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-280
Author(s):  
Keith W. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Royal Court ◽  
Abandoned Land ◽  
Public Career

Nguyễn Công Trứ, poet and songwriter, was an official at the Vietnamese court in the early nineteenth century who gained acclaim for settling landless peasants on abandoned land. This essay recounts and analyses his family background and the early part of his public career. It contrasts his initiatives in the countryside with criticism of them by officials at the royal court and examines his first major demotion in 1831. This study encompasses the contrasting career of Hoàng Quýnh, the official whose accusation caused Nguyễn Công Trứ's demotion. From this we gain some understanding of how King Minh Mạng maintained control of the royal court, through a system of promotions and demotions, amidst regional tensions and personality conflicts.

3. On the Radiant Spectrum

1869 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 147-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Brewster
Keyword(s):  
The Sun ◽  
Image Position ◽  
Small Image

I have given the name of Radiant Spectrum to a phenomenon which I discovered in 1814, and which I described to this Society in the early part of that year.It will be understood from fig. 1, which represents the brilliant radiation which surrounds a very small image of the sun, when it is formed either by reflection or refraction, or otherwise.

HOW TO FEED THE INFANT WHEN BREAST MILK WAS NOT AVAILABLE, ACCORDING TO SIR ARTHUR CLARKE, M.D., WRITING IN 1828

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 589-589
Author(s):  
T. E. C.
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Breast Milk ◽  
Soft Water ◽  
Infants And Children ◽  
Boiling Water ◽  
Size And Shape ◽  
Practical Guide ◽  
Prevention And Treatment ◽  
Made In

One of the best known books written for mothers in the early part of the nineteenth century was Sir Arthur Clark's: The Young Mother's Assistant; or a Practical Guide for the Prevention and Treatment of the Diseases of Infants and Children. If breast milk should not be available, Sir Arthur recommended the following: Should an infant, from accidental or other circumstances, be deprived of its food from the breast of its mother or nurse, an artificial substitute for it must be supplied; and it is evident that in this case the closer we can imitate nature the better. For this purpose a suckling bottle should be procured, the mouth of which should be as wide as that of an eight-ounce viol, [sic] which is to be stopped with sponge, covered with gauze, and made in size and shape to resemble a nipple. The following preparation is most suitable for an infant, as it comes nearest in quality to the mother's milk, and may be sucked through the sponge. On a small quantity of a crum [sic] of bread pour some boiling water; after soaking for about ten minutes, press it, and throw the water away, (this process purifies the bread from alum or any other saline substance which it may have contained); then boil it in as much soft water as will dissolve the bread and make a decoction of the consistence of barley water: to a sufficient quantity of this decoction, about a fifth part of fresh cow's milk is to be added, and sweetened with the best soft sugar.

Helium

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Emission Spectrum ◽  
Mass Spectrometer ◽  
Solar Eclipse ◽  
Atomic Structure ◽  
Chemical Elements ◽  
Bright Light ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Moon ◽  
First Time

Today we learn at such a young age about the periodic properties of the elements and their atomic structure that it seems as if we grew up with the knowledge, and that everyone must always have known such basic, simple stuff. But till nearly the end of the nineteenth century no one even suspected that such things as the noble gases, with their filled electronic orbits, might exist. Helium was the first one we at Brookhaven looked for in our mass spectrometer, and the first one discovered. This was in 1868, but the discovery was ignored and the discoverer ridiculed. He didn’t care; he had other things on his mind. His name was Pierre Jules César Janssen, and he was a French astronomer who sailed to India that year in order to take advantage of a predicted solar eclipse. With the overwhelming brightness of the sun’s disk blocked by the moon, he hoped to observe the outer layers using the newly discovered technique of absorption spectroscopy. Nobody at the time understood why, but it had been observed that when a bright light shone through a gas, the chemical elements in the gas absorbed the light at specific wavelengths. The resulting dark lines in the emission spectrum of the light were like fingerprints, for it had been found in chemical laboratories that when an element was heated it emitted light at the same wavelengths it would absorb when light from an outside source was shined on it. So the way the technique worked, Janssen reasoned, was that he could measure the wavelengths of the solar absorbed lines and compare them with lines emitted in chemical laboratories where different elements were routinely studied, thus identifying the gases present in the sun. On August 18 of that year the moon moved properly into position, and Janssen’s spectroscope captured the dark absorption lines of the gases surrounding the sun. It was an exciting moment, as for the first time the old riddle could be answered: “Twinkle twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.” The answer now was clear: the sun, a typical star, was made overwhelmingly of hydrogen. But to Janssen’s surprise there was one additional and annoying line, with a wavelength of 587.49 nanometers.

The ‘robed Christ’ in pre-Conquest sculptures of the Crucifixion

2000 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 153-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Coatsworth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Geographical Distribution ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Viking Period

In the nineteenth century, John Romilly Allen confidently claimed that the iconography of the Crucifixion with the robed or ‘fully draped’ Christ was a phenomenon of Celtic art, found in Scotland, Ireland and Wales, distinguishable from the ‘Saxon’ type in which Christ wore a loin-cloth. Other features of the Saxon type were the presence of the sun and moon above the arms of the cross, instead of angels as in Ireland; and the figures of the Virgin and St John at the foot of the cross, without the spear- and sponge-bearers, the latter pair appearing only exceptionally at Alnmouth, Northumberland; Aycliffe, County Durham; and Bradbourne, Derbyshire. Clearly two different versions were identified in this analysis, but no attempt was made to clarify the chronological relationship between the examples cited, and only the geographical distribution of a small number of examples was considered. Romilly Allen's confidence in distinguishing ‘Celt’ from ‘Saxon’ on the basis of art styles, even for the pre-Viking period, is not always shared today, as the continuing discussion of the origins of several important manuscripts shows. The terms ‘Insular’ and ‘Hiberno-Saxon’ used to describe much of the art from the sixth century to the eighth underline die perceived difficulties.

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