The six ages of Patrick: Yet another return to the dating question

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Joyce
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Classical Scheme ◽  
Literary Arguments ◽  
Made In

This article returns to the surviving texts of Patrick, apostle to Ireland, in order to refine further his floruit in the fifth century. It argues that Patrick's use of a classical scheme relating age to status clarifies the contexts for the autobiographical details of his life, and that these details can be correlated with the limited historical records that survive for this period. In connecting his excommunication of Coroticus to an Easter controversy c. 455, and his controversial elevation to an episcopal see to a dislocation in clerical authority in Britain c. 441, I argue that Patrick's formal clerical career c. 427-455 matches Richard Hanson's sophisticated literary arguments made in the latter third of the twentieth century. I also propose that the uncertainty over the date of Patrick's death (in a context of exile), as represented by various reports in the Irish and Welsh annals c. 457-493, is inconsequential to his formal period of authority.

The Dramatic Structure of Agamemnon

Ramus ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Michael Ewans
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Main Subject ◽  
Dramatic Structure ◽  
Prometheus Bound ◽  
The Many ◽  
Made In

In later antiquity it was universally held that Aeschylus was the most given, of the three fifth century Athenian tragic poets, to lavish spectacular display. This view rested on three foundations: first, consistent misinterpretation of the many jokes which Aristophanes makes in The Frogs about the archaic grandeur of Aeschylean drama — jokes which on close examination revolve almost entirely around the style of Aeschylus' language; second, the practice of importing scenes of spectacle and crowds of extras into Hellenistic and Roman productions of classical Greek tragedy; and, third, the ascription to this author of the play, Prometheus Bound, which undoubtedly calls for elaborate scenic requirements. The authenticity of Prometheus Bound has been increasingly called in question during the twentieth century: and no scholar who is prepared to accept the arguments and comparisons to be found in Mark Griffith's recent study would now care to place the composition of Prometheus Bound less than twenty years after the death of Aeschylus.If Prometheus Bound is not to be ascribed to Aeschylus, six of his plays survive. They are distinguished by their extreme theatrical economy; no device is used in them unless it bears close relevance to the playwright's purpose and theme. In his pioneering study, The Stagecraft of Aeschylus, Oliver Taplin has drawn attention to a number of ways in which this feature is to be observed in the surviving plays; and his penetrating observations are by no means confined to the main subject of the book, which is the dramatic use made in Greek tragedy of the entrances and exits of the characters and of the chorus. But much remains to be done, before we can seriously claim to understand the genius of Aeschylus and his successors as theatre craftsmen. I want now to introduce and open up an area of debate which I find to have been seriously neglected in the work on Aeschylus which I have read.

Niall ‘of the Nine Hostages’ in connexion with the treasures of Traprain Law and Ballinrees, and the destruction of Wroxeter, Chester, Caerleon and Caerwent

1924 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 123-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Ridgeway
Keyword(s):  
Good Condition ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Silver Plate ◽  
Firth Of Forth ◽  
The Hill ◽  
Made In

In 1914 the Scottish Antiquaries began excavations on the hill of Traprain Law, 20 miles E. of Edinburgh, about 2 miles from the sea and overlooking the Firth of Forth. Here in 1919 was made one of the most notable discoveries ever known in Britain, the hoard of Roman silver plate, now in the National Scottish Museum, and admirably described by Mr. Alex. Curle, Director of the Royal Scottish Museum. There are remains of 10 flagons or flasks, 5 wine cups, 50 bowls, deep and shallow, 22 flat circular dishes, 6 square dishes, 5 cylindrical vessels, 9 spoons, a wine strainer, part of a funnel, 2 lids, a toilet box, 2 handles in animal forms, etc., packets of cut-up pieces ready for smelting [or to pass by weight as money ?], a fibula, 2 buckles, a hand-mirror, an earring, and 4 silver coins—one each of Valens (364-78) and Valentinian II (379-93), and 2 of Honorius (395-423). These last named ‘were in good condition,’ and it was therefore evident that the deposit was made in the reign of Honorius ‘probably in the commencement of the fifth century, or at least shortly thereafter.’

A Leonidas for the Golden Age of Superhero Films: The Thermopylae Tradition in 300 (2006)

2018 ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Eric Ross
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Origin Story ◽  
Western Historiography

In the second of two chapters investigating the role of Homeric epic in fabricating golden ages, Ross proposes the current golden age of superhero movies as an effective lens for viewing the modern idealization of the Spartan king Leonidas as portrayed in 300 (2006). He cites several criteria: the superhero’s origin story; the threats posed by a tyrannical enemy and by civic bureaucracy; and the superhero’s tragic alienation from loved ones and society he protects. Leonidas’ superhero status resonates with Herodotus’ fifth-century BCE account of the Battle of Thermopylae, a “golden” moment in Western historiography, when Leonidas led his 300 Spartan warriors into Homeric “doomed combat” by standing their ground against the massive invasion of the Greek mainland by the army of Xerxes, Great King of Persia. Herodotus’ account has long been recognized as assimilating the Spartan warriors, especially Leonidas, to Homer’s depiction of mythical heroes, who were themselves the bases for twentieth-century superheroes. Ross demonstrates the political ramifications of the film’s use of storytelling to mobilize nostalgia for this golden age into contemporary re-enactment – despite director Zack Snyder’s (in)famous denials of political engagement.

Johanna Müller-Hermann’s Lied der Erinnerung: Austria, America, and Beyond

2021 ◽  
pp. 211-228
Author(s):  
Jennifer Ronyak
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Complex Terrain ◽  
Musical Settings ◽  
Critical Success ◽  
Program Notes ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Made In

Scholarship on musical settings of Walt Whitman’s When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d has only briefly looked into one of the most ambitious pieces composed on the poem in the earlier twentieth century: the Austrian woman composer Johanna Müller-Hermann’s orchestral cantata Lied der Erinnerung, premiered in Vienna in 1930. Through the piece has not remained in the repertoire, seen in light of its original context the cantata was a rich site for negotiating a complex terrain of ‘American’, ‘Austrian’, and ‘universal’ concepts. Through her structural decisions involving Whitman’s poem, her attempts to have the work reach American audiences, her use of borrowed melodies, and claims made in the work’s program notes, Müller-Hermann situated the work carefully between these competing frames while seeking to achieve critical success as a woman composer. The Whitmanesque vision of America that Müller-Hermann created would have also had a politically charged significance in both Austria and the U.S. in the period surrounding the work’s premiere.

Regional identities Angles and Saxons?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Rippon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The West ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
Southern Scandinavia ◽  
Burial Rites

Writing in the early eighth century, Bede described how three separate peoples— the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—had settled in Britain some three hundred years earlier, and ever since the genesis of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ scholarship in the nineteenth century archaeologists have sought to identify discrete areas of Anglian, Saxon, and Jutish settlement (e.g. Leeds 1912; 1936; 1945; Fox 1923, 284–95). The identification of these peoples was based upon different artefact styles and burial rites, with most attention being paid to brooches. The degree of variation in the composition of brooch assemblages across eastern England is shown in Table 9.1. Cruciform brooches with cast side knobs, for example, were thought to have been ‘Anglian’, and saucer brooches ‘Saxon’ (although even in the early twentieth century Leeds (1912) had started to doubt the attribution of applied brooches to the West Saxons). In recent years, however, this traditional ‘culturehistorical’ approach towards interpreting the archaeological record has been questioned, as it is now recognized that, rather than being imported from mainland Europe during the early to mid fifth century, regional differences in artefact assemblages emerged over the course of the late fifth to late sixth centuries (e.g. Hines 1984; 1999; Hilund Nielsen 1995; Lucy 2000; Owen- Crocker 2004; 2011; Penn and Brugmann 2007; Walton Rogers 2007; Brugmann 2011; Dickinson 2011; Hills 2011). In early to mid fifth-century England, in contrast, it now appears that Germanic material culture was in fact relatively homogeneous, with objects typical of ‘Saxon’ areas on the continent being found in so-called ‘Anglian’ areas of England, and vice versa. The earliest material from East Anglia, for example—equal-arm, supporting-arm, and early cruciform brooches—are most closely paralleled in the Lower Elbe region of Saxony, with the distinctive ‘Anglian’ identity of EastAnglia onlyemerging through later contact with southern Scandinavia (Hines 1984; Carver 1989, 147, 152; Hills and Lucy 2013, 38–9). Indeed, many elements of the classic suite of early Anglo-Saxon material culture actually developed within Britain as opposed to having been created on the continent (Hills 2003, 104–7; Owen-Crocker 2004, 13), with new identities beingmade in Britain rather than being imported frommainland Europe (Hills 2011, 10).

Ecología y Bioética. La insuficiencia de los límites

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
José Miguel Serrano Ruiz-Calderón
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Current Problem ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human History ◽  
Humanae Vitae ◽  
Individual Aspect ◽  
Siglo Xx ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Made In

La ecología y la bioética como disciplinas nuevas aparecen durante el siglo XX como consecuencia del horror producido por los abusos técnico-industriales. Tienen pues un origen común y positivo, como está generalmente admitido. Sin embargo, autores críticos han observado que principalmente la bioética ha derivado en una actitud complaciente que, en definitiva, ha servido como coartada moral a buena parte de los abusos realizados en nombre de la Ciencia. Todo lo que es técnicamente posible hacer se acaba haciendo y además encuentra una justificación bioética construida por los expertos de forma analítica. Se puede sospechar que lo mismo sucede con la ecología. Esto constituye en definitiva una traición a las pretensiones de los fundadores de las nuevas ciencias. No se trata de algo nuevo en la Historia humana donde los hallazgos más valiosos o los valores más altos han sido habitualmente manipulados. Parte del problema actual radica en la divinización del hombre, ya sea en su aspecto individual o bajo el concepto de Humanidad. Paradójicamente esta divinización causa la perdida de la noción de dignidad y favorece la conversión del hombre concreto en mero instrumento de la acción técnica. Nuestra época alberga, sin embargo, motivos para el optimismo. La respuesta fundamental se encuentra en la noción de “límite” o si se prefiere de marco que sitúa al hombre en su lugar en el universo, distinto del puro mundo natural y relacionado con la divinidad. La Humanae Vitae es un ejemplo claro de esta concepción globalizadora. ---------- Ecology and bioethics as new disciplines appear during the twentieth century as a result of horror produced by industrial technical abuses. Therefore they have a common and positive origin, as is generally admitted. However, critics mainly authors have observed that bioethics has led to a complacent attitude that ultimately served as a moral alibi for much of the abuses made in the name of science possible. All that is technically possible is just doing and also finds a justification built by bioethics experts analytically. You may suspect that the same is true in the field of ecology. This is definitely a betrayal of the claims of the founders of the new sciences. This is not something new in human history where the most valuable findings or higher values have been routinely manipulated. Part of the current problem is the deification of man, either in its individual aspect or under the concept of humanity. Paradoxically, this deification causes the loss of the notion of dignity and promotes the conversion of concrete man into a mere instrument of technical action. Our era houses, however, grounds for optimism. The fundamental answer lies in the notion of “limit” or “frame” which puts man in his place in the universe, other than pure natural world and related to divinity. Humanae Vitae is a clear example of this globalizing conception.

What can Observations of Comets Tell Us about the Solar Wind at the Maunder Minimum?

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (A30) ◽  
pp. 181-183
Author(s):  
N. V. Zolotova ◽  
Y. V. Sizonenko ◽  
M. V. Vokhmyanin ◽  
I. S. Veselovsky
Keyword(s):  
Solar Wind ◽  
Spectral Composition ◽  
Maunder Minimum ◽  
Radius Vector ◽  
Physical Parameters ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Made In ◽  
Visual Observations

AbstractThis paper discussed whether 17th Century observers left historical records of the plasma tails of comets that would be adequate to enable us to extract the physical parameters of the solar wind. The size of the aberration angle between a comet’s tail and its radius-vector defines the type of the tail: plasma or dust. We considered Bredikhin’s calculations of the parameters for 10 comet tails observed during the Maunder minimum (1645 – 1715). For those comets the angle between the tail’s axis and the radius-vector on average exceeded the value of 10° that is typical for dust tails. It was noted that visual observations of the ion tails of comets are very difficult to make owing to the spectral composition of their radiation, confirming the conclusion that observations of comet tails made in the 17th Century are not suitable for deriving past values of the physical parameters of the solar wind.

scholarly journals Martyrs made in the sky: the Zénith balloon tragedy and the construction of the French Third Republic's first scientific heroes

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-386
Author(s):  
Patrick Luiz Sullivan De Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
High Altitude ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
The Third ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Claude Bernard ◽  
Made In

Following the balloon's invention in 1783, the French greeted the technology with enthusiasm, speculating extensively about its potential scientific and practical applications. However, the lack of progress in navigating against the winds discredited ballooning, and in the following decades it became the domain of spectacular forms of entertainment and of swindlers trying to defraud public subscriptions. All of this changed after the 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War, during which balloons were used to breach the siege of Paris. This essay explores how the aeronautical community, led by the recently established Société Française de Navigation Aérienne, mobilized the memory of the war to transform the balloon into a symbol of a heroic republican science. Paramount in that process was the Zénith 's 1875 high-altitude ascent that killed two aeronauts—Joseph Crocé-Spinelli and Théodore Sivel. The tragedy reverberated beyond France's scientific community, and through popular acclaim the two aeronauts became the Third Republic's first scientific martyrs, anticipating the eventual apotheoses of figures like Claude Bernard and Louis Pasteur. The ballooning revival in the last third of the century helped strengthen the association between France and aeronautics, thus setting the stage for the country to acquire a central position in the field by the early twentieth century.

Transformations of Identities

2020 ◽  
pp. 97-116
Author(s):  
Magali Coumert
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Specific Group ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Royal Authority ◽  
Place Of Origin ◽  
Made In

Ethnogenesis theory has brought about a seminal shift in research on ethnic identities. This chapter maps the fluidity of Frankish identity in the Merovingian realm, illustrating that the assertion and role of ethnic identity depended on the specific context in which such claims were made. In the fifth century, elite Romans and Franks were open to innovation and local collaborations. As demonstrated by Salic Law, the Merovingians built their kingdom on territorial authority. Only after 580 did they choose to be linked with the Franks as a specific group, in the context of the civil wars and the partition of the territory among different kings. From the seventh century, the Merovingian kings voluntarily increased the legal diversity inherited from the conquests with laws for specific groups, like the Lex Ribuaria, distinguished by their place of origin. This custom highlighted royal authority as well as autonomy within the kingdom. Interest in the gens Francorum grew in parallel. The eighth century brought a new unification of the Franks with Merovingian and Pippinid leaders.

The Saxon Culture-Sequence at Portchester Castle

1970 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Cunliffe
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Isle Of Wight ◽  
Glass Vessel ◽  
Local Tradition ◽  
Culture Sequence ◽  
Made In

SummaryExcavations at Portchester Castle have produced evidence of occupation throughout the Saxon period. After the cessation of standard Roman wares and local hand-made types early in the fifth century two Grubenhäuser were built. The contemporary assemblage, assignable to the mid fifth century, included (?) imported carinated bowls and local hand-made grass-tempered wares made in the Roman tradition. Late in the fifth or early in the sixth century stamped Saxon urns appear and probably continue, alongside the grass-tempered tradition, into the seventh century. An association of a grass-tempered pot with an imported glass vessel of eighth-century date shows that the local tradition persisted, but by the middle of the eighth century hand-made jars in gritty fabrics, like those from Hamwih, appear in a substantial rubbish deposit which belongs to the initial occupation of the hall complex. By the tenth century a new style of wheel-thrown pottery, called here Portchester ware, is dominant. It is mass produced and distributed largely from the Isle of Wight to central Hampshire and from the Sussex border to the River Mean. Contemporary forms include imported wares, green-glazed pitchers, pots from the Chichester region, and an assemblage made in a wheel-made continuation of the local gritty-fabric tradition. Portchester ware had gone out of use by 1100 at the latest.

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