Plutarch's Rhythmic Prose

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. O. Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Prose Rhythm ◽  
First Time

Greek literature is divided, like many literatures, into poetry and prose; but in the earlier Roman Empire, 31 BC to AD 300, much Greek (and Latin) prose was written in one organized rhythmic system. Whether most, or hardly any, Greek prose adopted this patterning has been entirely unclear; this book for the first time adequately establishes an answer. It then seeks to get deeper into the nature of prose-rhythm through one of the greatest Imperial works, Plutarch’s Lives. All its phrases, almost 100,000, have been scanned rhythmically. Prose-rhythm is revealed as a means of expression, which draws attention to words and word-groups. (Online readings are offered too.) Some passages in the Lives pack rhythms together more closely than others; the book looks especially at rhythmically dense passages. These do not occur randomly; they attract attention to themselves, and are marked out as climactic in the narrative, or as in other ways of highlighted significance. Comparison emerges as crucial to the Lives on many levels. Much of the book closely discusses particular dense moments, in commentary form, to show how much rhythm contributes to understanding, and is to be integrated with other sorts of criticism. These remarkable passages make apparent the greatness of Plutarch as a prose-writer: a side not greatly considered amid the huge resurgence of work on him. The book also analyses closely rhythmic and unrhythmic passages from three Greek novelists. Rhythm illuminates both a supreme Greek writer, Plutarch, and three prolific centuries of Greek literary history.

Rhythmic Prose in Imperial Greek Literature

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. O. Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
System A ◽  
First Time

The chapter looks at the division between poetry and prose in ancient and other literatures, and shows the importance of rhythmic patterning in ancient prose. The development of rhythmic prose in Greek and Latin is sketched, the system explained and illustrated (from Latin). It is firmly established, for the first time, which of the main Greek non-Christian authors 31 BC–AD 300 write rhythmically. The method takes a substantial sample of random sentence-endings (usually 400) from each of a large number of Imperial authors; it compares that sample with one sample of the same size (400) drawn randomly from a range of authors earlier than the invention of this rhythmic system. A particular sort of X2-test is applied. Many Imperial authors, it emerges, write rhythmically; many do not. The genres most likely to offer rhythmic writing are, unexpectedly, narrative: historiography and the novel.

"Itzt kommen die Soldaten"

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tilman Venzl
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Military History ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Social Structural ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Military ◽  
First Time

In the 18th century, as many as 300 German-language plays were produced with the military and its contact and friction with civil society serving as focus of the dramatic events. The immense public interest these plays attracted feeds not least on the fundamental social structural change that was brought about by the establishment of standing armies. In his historico-cultural literary study, Tilman Venzl shows how these military dramas literarily depict complex social processes and discuss the new problems in an affirmative or critical manner. For the first time, the findings of the New Military History are comprehensively included in the literary history of the 18th century. Thus, the example of selected military dramas – including Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm and Lenz's Die Soldaten – reveals the entire range of variety characterizing the history of both form and function of the subject.

scholarly journals Paul’s "Fullness of Time” (Gal 4:4) and "Fullness of Times” (Eph 1:10)

Verbum Vitae ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Rambiert-Kwaśniewska
Keyword(s):  
Greek Literature ◽  
Similar Expression ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
First Time

The expression “the fullness of time/times” is problematic because it was used for the first time in all of Greek literature by Paul, the Apostle to the Nations. A similar expression can be found only in certain papyri, where “the completion of times” was the expression used to call, among others, the end of a loan period. The only key to understanding the connotation of “the fullness of time/times” is an in-depth analysis of the immediate textual contexts of both Galatians 4:4 and Ephesians 1:10, the two places where this novelty is found. This article is an attempt to interpret the “fullness of time/times” in Galatians 4:4 and Ephesians 1:10 (with the addition of Mark 1:15). Our conclusion is that in Galatians 4:4 “the fullness of time” should be considered as “the end of the domination of Law.” As for Ephesians 1:10, there are multiple valid proposals for explaining “the fullness of times”, and we have not limited ourselves to any one in particular.

scholarly journals The potential of gypsum speleothems for paleoclimatology: application to the Iberian Roman Humid Period

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Gázquez ◽  
Thomas K. Bauska ◽  
Laia Comas-Bru ◽  
Bassam Ghaleb ◽  
José-María Calaforra ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Stable Isotopes ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Hydration Water ◽  
Humid Climate ◽  
Se Spain ◽  
Climate History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Paleoclimate Reconstructions ◽  
First Time ◽  
Humid Period

Abstract Carbonate cave deposits (speleothems) have been used widely for paleoclimate reconstructions; however, few studies have examined the utility of other speleothem-forming minerals for this purpose. Here we demonstrate for the first time that stable isotopes (δ17O, δ18O and δD) of structurally-bound gypsum (CaSO4·2H2O) hydration water (GHW) can be used to infer paleoclimate. Specifically, we used a 63 cm-long gypsum stalactite from Sima Blanca Cave to reconstruct the climate history of SE Spain from ~ 800 BCE to ~ 800 CE. The gypsum stalactite indicates wet conditions in the cave and humid climate from ~ 200 BCE to 100 CE, at the time of the Roman Empire apogee in Hispania. From ~ 100 CE to ~ 600 CE, evaporation in the cave increased in response to regional aridification that peaked at ~ 500–600 CE, roughly coinciding with the transition between the Iberian Roman Humid Period and the Migration Period. Our record agrees with most Mediterranean and Iberian paleoclimate archives, demonstrating that stable isotopes of GHW in subaerial gypsum speleothems are a useful tool for paleoclimate reconstructions.

Mediaeval Rhodian Love-Poems

1880 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 308-313
Author(s):  
H. F. Tozer
Keyword(s):  
Early Death ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Initial Letter ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Important Addition ◽  
First Time

The study of mediaeval Greek literature has lately experienced a serious loss in the early death of Dr. W. Wagner, who by his Medieval Greek Texts, published for the English Philological Society, his Carmina Graeca Medii Aevi, and other works on the same subject, has deserved well of all who are interested in the writings of that period. Not the least important addition to our knowledge of this branch of literature is that which he made shortly before his death by publishing The Alphabet of Love (Ὁ ἀλφάβητος τῆς ἀγάπης, Leipzig: Teubner). The manuscript from which this is printed for the first time was discovered by him in the British Museum during the spring of 1878, and it contains a collection of love-poems in the usual Greek ballad-metre, which were partly arranged according to their initial letter; this system Dr. Wagner has introduced throughout, whence the name The Alphabet of Love. The place of their composition is shown by internal evidence to have been Rhodes, for in one of the poems the writer represents her lover, who has gone into foreign lands, as saying that he had left her in that island—

Lipsius and the Art of Letter-Writing

1956 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 145-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Catherine Dunn
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Ben Jonson ◽  
Letter Writing ◽  
Prose Style ◽  
History Of ◽  
Prose Rhythm ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Precise Role

“The whole history of the ‘epistle,’ as a literary genre, is full of interest and invites investigation.” — W. Rhys Roberts.One of Professor Morris Croll's earliest essays on prose style was an article on Justus Lipsius, the sixteenth-century Belgian scholar and rhetorician whose name has become identified with the “anti-Ciceronian” school of prose. Croll later studied him as the leader of a triumvirate (Lipsius, Montaigne, and Bacon), and thus clarified somewhat the relationship of English prose style to continental experiments. The indebtedness of certain English writers, like John Hoskyns and Ben Jonson, to the epistolary theory of Lipsius is now well known, but the precise role played by his Epistolica institutio in literary history has never been clearly presented. Because Professor Croll's interests were centered in prose rhythm, he analyzed the Institutio only for the light it shed upon the development of “Attic” prose structure in the Renaissance.

A New End-title in the Herculaneum Papyri and the First Case of a Preserved subscriptio in One of the Books Assigned to Philodemus’ Systematic Arrangement of the Philosophers (PHerc. 327)

Mnemosyne ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graziano Ranocchia
Keyword(s):  
Greek Literature ◽  
First Case ◽  
History Of ◽  
Internal Arrangement ◽  
First Time

AbstractPhilodemus’ Systematic Arrangement of the Philosophers is witnessed only once in Greek literature (D.L. 10.3). This notwithstanding, several Herculaneum papyri have been assigned to it on various grounds. However, these assignments rest on varying degrees of probability, not least because the name of the author and the title of the work do not survive in any of these books. PHerc. 327, which hands down the so-called [History of the Eleatic and the Atomistic Schools], represents the first such case. I was able to detect its end-title for the first time and to read the name of its author, who is confirmed to be Philodemus. This increases the probability that also other three books which have historically been assigned to this treatise, and whose hands show a close likeness to each other and to PHerc. 327, effectively belong to it, thereby reinforcing the current communis opinio about its internal arrangement.

scholarly journals Rome and Mesopotamia – importers into India in the first millennium AD

Antiquity ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 81 (314) ◽  
pp. 972-988 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta Tomber
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
East Coast ◽  
East Coast Of India ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
First Time

Ever since Wheeler's triumphant discovery of Roman pottery at Arikamedu in the 1940s, it has been appreciated that the east coast of India was in reach of the Roman Empire. Tracking down the finds of Roman pottery on the Indian sub-continent reported since then, the author discovered that many of the supposed Roman amphorae were actually ‘torpedo jars’ from Mesopotamia. Here the areas of influence of these two great imports, probably of wine, are mapped for the first time.

Greek

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Morales
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
Romance Novels ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
The Third ◽  
Critical Issues

This article offers an overview of Greek literature of the Roman Empire. The first section discusses ways in which Greek writing responds to Roman rule. This section ranges widely and takes snapshots from six writers—Artemidorus, Plutarch, Lucian, Basil of Caesarea, Galen, and Josephus—from which to show the complexities involved in thinking about Greek literature and its attendant critical issues, including how we might read ‘resistance’ and how Hellenisms relate to Christianities, and Jewish and other identities. The second section focuses more closely on Greek poetry and pantomime, and the third section on the romance novels and Greek prose fiction, including a brief look at a couple of texts that possibly show Egyptian influences.

V. The Second Sophistic and Imperial Greek Literature

2005 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 74-89
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Roman Greece ◽  
Fourth Century Bce

This book has focused so far upon the extraordinary popularity of epideictic oratory in the first three centuries of the Roman empire, the ‘Second Sophistic’ in Philostratus’ sense (notwithstanding its distant roots in the fourth century BCE). We have seen that these declamations were performance pieces, and that issues of identity were explored through the observation of the sophist’s body; that language and style were heavily theorized, but also highly experimental; and that the interpretation of these ingenious, mobile texts demands considerable resourcefulness and attentiveness. What I want to explore in this final chapter is the points of intersection between these aspects of sophistic literature and the wider literary culture of Roman Greece. I shall focus particularly on two areas, which are central to both oratorical declamation and wider literary culture: ‘the self and exotic narrative.

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