scholarly journals APPIAN THE ARTIST: RHYTHMIC PROSE AND ITS LITERARY IMPLICATIONS

2015 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 788-806 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.O. Hutchinson

If we had no idea which parts of Greek literature in a certain period were poetry or prose, we would regard it as our first job to find out. How much of the Greek prose of the Imperial period is rhythmic has excited less attention; and yet the question should greatly affect both our reading of specific texts and our understanding of the whole literary scene. By ‘rhythmic’ prose, this article means only prose that follows the Hellenistic system of rhythm started, it is said, by Hegesias, and adopted by Cicero and by many Latin writers of the Imperial period. Estimates of how much Greek Imperial prose is rhythmic have long varied drastically. Some experts suggest that all or much artistic Greek prose in the period is rhythmic, others that what little there is fades out after the first century a.d., as part of the victory of Atticism. There has been fairly little substantial work on rhythmic prose in the first three centuries a.d. for over fifty years (more on accentual prose from the fourth). The object of this article is to investigate a large part of one author's work thoroughly, and to establish that that part is rhythmic. It will also aim to show how that conclusion should greatly affect our whole conception of the author as a writer, and our reading of his every sentence.

Ramus ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 37 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 11-31
Author(s):  
J.L. Lightfoot

Dionysios gehört zu den interessantesten Problemen der griechischen Literaturgeschichte.Knaack (1905) 916.34f.Within the general context of increasing interest in Greek literature in the Roman period, interest in Dionysius the Periegete is certainly on the rise. Our knowledge of his extensive textual tradition is still expanding, and further editions are under way; the ideologies that structure his work have been explored in a series of publications by Christian Jacob (1990, 1991); and the welcome increase in the volume of publications over the last five years or so includes a collection of essays which is especially geared to one of my themes in this essay, Dionysius' relations with Hellenistic poetry and poets. Yet there are some basic aspects of his poetics that remain un-, or under-, studied. At the heart of the matter, I suggest, are two major backgrounds that need to be explored further.The first is the reception of Hellenistic poetry in the imperial period. Dionysius is a neo-Hellenistic poet. Indeed, he is so convincing a neo-Hellenistic poet that a critic as astute as Tycho Mommsen placed him in the first century BCE on the basis of a whole array of stylistic and metrical and other sorts of linguistic criteria. Dionysius' true date has been known for a century and a quarter; but we are really none the wiser about what it was that gave rise to this extraordinarily competent and convincing Hellenistic imitation. It is not only that he imitates Apollonius, Callimachus, Nicander, Aratus and others in purple passages of his own, but that so many of his techniques of composition and allusion, and—as this paper will demonstrate—his formal evocation of certain styles of writing, are thoroughly Hellenistic. So the first thing that is needed is an exploration of the various ways in which imperial writers respond to the masters of the high Hellenistic period, and their successors: is Dionysius a representative of a special and distinctive strain in imperial poetics, or is he a particular instance of something more multiform and complex?


Mnemosyne ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 593-615
Author(s):  
Floris Overduin

AbstractThis article provides a detailed interpretation and suggests a literary background for the brief (26 verses) elegiac recipe against colic (SH690), written by Philo of Tarsus in the first centuryAD. Although on one level it is a serious pharmacological prescription, on another level it is also a literary piece, concerned with a marked tone of voice, Homeric play, and general display ofpaideia. Particularly its play of substituting certain ingredients with mythological riddles is striking. Its appeal to both doctors and men of culture fits the intellectual pattern of the culture of the Second Sophistic. As a poetic hybrid it also plays on different genres inherited from the previous Hellenistic era. Moreover, it constitutes a telling example of the late subgenre of elegiac pharmacology, in an era in which elegiac had all but vanished from Greek literature.


2019 ◽  
Vol 131 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-19
Author(s):  
Clark Bates

Matthew 11:30 could easily be considered one of the most recognizable passages of the New Testament. Many find comfort and fortitude in the words of Jesus, and warm to the idea that his ‘yoke’; is ‘easy’ and ‘burden’, ‘light’. However recognized and familiar this passage may be, it has not gone unnoticed throughout scholarship as a persistent word study in need of incessant explanation. While copious amounts of ink have been spilt discussing the nature of the ‘yoke’ in Matthew 11:30, it is the position of this article that the author of Matthew, had no intention of creating such a mystery. Rather, that the emphasis is to be found in the nature of the yoke itself and the attributive use of χρηστός in Greco-Roman literature, including that of the Greek Old Testament, and the writings of the first-century Christians. This article seeks to demonstrate that the use of χρηστός in the Matthean Gospel does not mean ‘easy’ by English standards, nor was this what the audience of this Gospel would have taken it to mean, given the common use of the term. This is accomplished through an engagement of the text and message of Matthew, followed by an examination of the word’s use in Classical Greek compositions and the Apostolic Fathers, as well as its use in the LXX and the New Testament.


1979 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 13-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Mitchell

The history of Roman and Italian businessmen in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, and especially in Asia, during the first century B.C. is a familiar one. There is ample evidence of many kinds for their emigration and activities after the formation of the province of Asia, interrupted by the hegemony of Mithridates, but resumed on a larger scale after he had been driven back from Asia into Pontus. This evidence can be placed into two broad categories. First, there are allusions in the contemporary literature, inscriptions and historical accounts of the period which provide direct information about individuals and families active in the province. Then there is the evidence of inscriptions of the Imperial period, especially the second and third centuries AD., which reveal both established settlements of resident Romans in the cities and an extraordinary number of families with Roman and Italian names, which could clearly trace their origins back to the Republican period of emigration and settlement. Opportunities to study particular families or groups of emigrants at both periods are unfortunately rare, since usually one or the other category of evidence is lacking. Although the record is far from complete, and it is necessary to rely more on conjecture than one would wish, the object of this study is to investigate one such emigrant family, the Sestullii, whose presence in Asia is attested both in Republican literary sources and in Imperial inscriptions. It is clearly impossible to write a continuous history of the gens, or even to reconstruct its stemma in outline, especially since there is a notably large gap in our knowledge between ca 50 B.C. and A.D. 150, a two hundred year span from which only a single relevant inscription survives, but the family name is so rare that it can reasonably be assumed that all its bearers are related to one another in some way. It must be stressed that this assumption underlies the whole reconstruction offered here.


1988 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 43-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. Kearsley

Recent studies of some of the leading families of Asia Minor in the early imperial period have shown the value of a prosopographical analysis for elucidating the history of the region and, in particular, of bringing into sharp focus the complex and far-reaching connections among those families which formed the aristocratic elites in the Graeco-Roman cities. In her 1966 study, Shelagh Jameson dealt at length with the Lycian family of Licinnii from Oenoanda. Among its members was a certain Marcia Lycia who, as the daughter of Marcius Titianus, married into the family from Cibyra. Jameson did not turn her attention to these Cibyran relatives of the Licinnii and the following is offered, therefore, as a supplementary study of the history and significance of that network of families. The discussion has two aspects: the delineation of one of the connections of these Cibyrans with another family elsewhere in Asia Minor, and a discussion of the evidence provided about the nature of the title asiarch in the first century.


Author(s):  
Marilyn B. Skinner

The basic dominance-submission model of sexual relations, involving a hierarchical distinction between the active and passive roles, was the same in Greek and Roman cultures and remained unchanged throughout classical antiquity. However, we find subtle modifications reflected in the literary tradition from the Homeric age to imperial Rome. In Homer and Hesiod, heterosexual relations are the only recognized form of sexual congress, and consensual sex is mutually pleasurable. Forced sex, in the form of abduction and rape, also occurs in epic narrative. Pederasty became a literary theme in Greek lyric poetry of the archaic age. In classical Athens, discourses of sexuality were tied to political ideology, because self-control was a civic virtue enabling the free adult male householder to manage his estate correctly and serve the city-state in war and peace. Tragedy illustrates the dire impact of unbridled erōs, while comedy mocks those who trespass against moderation or violate gender norms, and forensic oratory seeks to disqualify such offenders from participating in government. Philosophical schools disagreed over the proper place of erōs in a virtuous life. While pederastic relations dominated discussions of love in philosophic works, romantic affairs between men and women received greater attention in Hellenistic poetry, in keeping with an increased emphasis on shared pleasure and reciprocal emotional satisfaction. During the late Republic and the Augustan age, Roman authors incorporated erotic motifs from archaic lyric and Hellenistic epigram into their own first-person love poems. The genre of love elegy, in which the poet-lover professes himself enslaved to a harsh mistress, became widely popular during Augustus’ reign but disappeared shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, Lucretius’ didactic epic On the Nature of Things, and Vergil’s Aeneid, a heroic account of the founding of Rome, both treat erotic obsession as destructive. In the Imperial period, elite anxieties were displaced onto concerns about gender deviance on the part of males and females alike: the figures of the cinaedus and the tribas were castigated in moralizing poetry, especially satire and satiric epigram. Roman novels focused upon the sexual escapades of marginal displaced types. Under Roman rule, on the other hand, Greek literature saw a new flowering in the Second Sophistic movement. While pederasty remained a favorite subject, hotly championed against heterosexual relations in prose treatises, the Greek novel explored a new model of heterosexuality in which premarital chastity and mutual fidelity appear to anticipate later Christian values.


2006 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 1-2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Steel

The focus of this survey is on oratory as a spoken phenomenon, intimately related to politics and government at Rome. Its chronological scope is roughly from the beginning of the second century B.C. until the end of the first century A.D.; it has no pretensions to offer a guide to oratory in the later Empire. Its geographical focus is firmly on Rome, reflecting the overwhelming bias in our source material. I start with the occasions for oratory in Rome and turn then to the issues which arise from the process of turning a speech, delivered in front of an audience on a particular occasion, into a written text which can be accessed and enjoyed in private and at any time. I then consider some of the means by which orators of the imperial period explored different means of preserving their oratorical activities for posterity. In the final two chapters I concentrate on orators themselves: how they carried out their task, and reflected upon it, as adult practitioners, and then how boys became the next generation of orators.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-230
Author(s):  
D Pugazhendhi

The Greek and Tamil people did sea trade from the pre-historic times. Sandalwood is seen only in Tamil land and surrounding places. It is also one of the items included in the trade. The Greek word ‘σανταλίνων’ is first mentioned in the ancient Greek works around the middle of the first century CE. The fact that the word is related to Tamil, but the etymologist did not acknowledge the same, rather they relate it to other languages. As far as its uses are concerned, it is not found in the ancient Greek literatures. One another type of wood ‘κέδρου’ cedar is also mentioned in the ancient Greek literature with the medicinal properties similar to ‘σανταλίνων’. In the same way the use of the Hebrew Biblical word ‘Almuggim -אַלְמֻגִּ֛ים’ which is the word used for sandalwood, also denotes teak wood. This shows that in these words, there are possibilities of some semantic changes such as semantic shift or broadening. Keywords: biblical word, Greek, Hebrew, Sandalwood, Tamil


Antichthon ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 35-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. J. McKay

Our level of tolerance of solar and lunar symbolism is now much lower than it was when devotees went questing in the fields of mythology in the nineteenth century. Should a scholar now appear automatically to equate an epiphany of Apollo with the rising of the sun, he will find it hard to carry conviction, and rightly so. At the other pole is the thesis of J.E. Fontenrose, recently accorded the accolade by G. Karl Galinsky as neither to be ‘ignored nor disputed’. He argues that, while Diana was clearly identified with the moon in Roman literature of the first century B.C. because of her association with Hecate in the triformis dea, Apollo was never equated with the sun until the Imperial period.


2003 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 65-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Fontana ◽  
Fabrizio Felici

AbstractThe present contribution considers Italic imports into Tripolitania between the end of the 1st century BC and the 3rd century AD with special reference to the city of Lepcis Magna and its territory. The imports consist mainly of fine ceramic tableware and amphorae. The archaeological context is varied and highlights the diverse use of Italic goods. A wealth of information has been derived from the study of subterranean tombs excavated in the suburbs of Lepcis by the Libyan Department of Antiquities and by the University of Rome III mission. The assemblages consist of grave goods dated to between the middle of the first century BC and the 3rd century AD. Here we consider a sample of ten subterranean tombs not all of which have been published. They are located in the necropolis of the western suburbs of Lepcis with the exception of a tomb at Gelda, in the southern suburbs, and the Ganima tombs in the countryside to the east of Lepcis. Burial in subterranean tombs apparendy was reserved for the nobility while the majority of the population were buried in surface cemeteries often nearby. A contextual study of the early and middle Imperial period of the villa of Wadi er-Rsaf—excavated between 1995 and 1998—provided more data. Further surface reconnaissance surveys of various sample areas near Lepcis were carried out by the same mission in 1999-2000. Special emphases is placed on the survey in the Silin area on the coast some 15 km west of Lepcis and another inland in W Tareglat, now semi-desert, 40 km SE of Lepcis. The quality of the documentation is uneven but good enough to reveal the presence of Italic goods in different contexts: the ritual setting of a necropolis, everyday life in a prosperous suburban home, and rural settlements in the hinterland.


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