Comprehending Comprehensible Input (CI): Some Observations

Most people who use the word ‘Latin’ as the name of a language in antiquity (not Medieval or Neo-Latin therefore) seem unaware that Latin was a continuum made up of many different varieties, Classical Latin (which they identify with Latin) being only one of them. So when they talk of spoken Latin they mean spoken Classical Latin, no other variety from antiquity being available that is suitable to be spoken. This is ironic on two counts. First, the overwhelming majority of native Latin speakers did not speak Classical Latin at all. Secondly, the small minority of people who did speak it did not do so routinely as a language of everyday conversation, but only on certain formal occasions and in certain public situations. They spoke routinely the appropriate form of their first language, the form that was used by a social, cultural and educational elite. This was not Classical Latin, which was not an acquired form of Latin but one that was learned as if it were a second language. What the language they did speak routinely was like we do not know, and no doubt it comprised several different registers, as languages do. Whether they realise it or not, people who engage in informal conversations in formal Classical Latin today are not re-enacting any authentic experience that was to be had in the ancient world.

Practical Leadership: Learning from Great Rulers in History

This paper examines the applied principles and leadership styles of great ancient men in the light of the Bible as the Word of God. Practically speaking, scholarly literature in leadership and management lacked attention to the study of biblical figures as leaders. The author utilised secondary analysis of qualitative information from documented life stories of renowned leaders in human history. This paper utilizes qualitative content analysis to evaluate patterns of popular ancient leaders' styles in leading their subjects. With content analysis, the author is obliged to read and re-read the text, specifically the Bible, as the main source of data and focus on the specific timeline of the ancient world. The scope and limitation of this paper cover only the discussion on the prominent historical people, specifically Biblical characters, and does not include the current leaders of our time. This paper hopes to bring back the basics on leading people worth emulating by modern-day leaders. It explores the successes and failures of these ancient leaders that shaped history and even world cultures. It also aims to promote a blueprint that was already utilised by leaders in the ancient world regarding leading constituents and subjects. The scope and limitation of this study enfold the discussion on the prominent historical people and does not include the current leaders of our modern time.

The Infinite Pleasure of Reading

Irene Vallejo11 has perfectly demonstrated the accuracy of Nuccio Ordine’s thesis on the usefulness of the useless. In a screenobsessed world that often destroys our serenity and the pleasure to be found in slowness, this wonderful author has found a direct line to the relevance of the ancient world and, by extension, to the world of books and many of the things they do to make life worth living. Kant distinguished between what has a price – and what has dignity.

Contexts

Chapter 5 uses the model of the three “worlds of the text” to discuss the ways that poems are always spanning the ancient world and the worlds of their readers. It advocates for the necessity of both historical sensitivity and attention to the needs of the present moment. It discusses allusion as one way in which biblical poems can relate to one another. It argues that prophetic poetry in particular is both uniquely oriented to historical moments and at times paradoxically resistant to specific rhetorical purposes. It also considers how the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE was a traumatic catalyst for new creative work. The chapter ends with a reading of Psalm 137 as a poem of rage and trauma, in conversation with W. E. B. Du Bois and Reginald Dwayne Betts. Ultimately, this chapter argues that the work of reading poems is not easy, but is myriad, demanding, and morally complex. It requires patient consideration of the poem in its diverging contexts and the extension of empathy to readers and writers, past and present.

VIOLENCE IN LITERATURE: PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECT

Does art justify cruelty? If the story is realistic, should it contain a description of the brutal events for the mimesis criterion? Or is violence and cruelty unacceptable because they give rise to new violence? Should the meeting with violence be a catharsis for us that make us better? This question has many interpretations and the purpose of this paper is to clarify the model of solution. The study found that the ancient aestheticization of «useful cruelty» in order to make the reader / viewer suffer had an ambiguous impact on culture, transforming into «cruelty for correction» in the New Age. The perception of cruelty as a means of distinguishing between «one’s own and another’s» (his toriography of the Ancient World and the Early Middle Ages) remained a political device (like fables about a crucified boy as a means of propaganda in the DNR). The legitimating of cruelty as the government’s right to torture (from 1484 to the present) leads us to the totalitarian empires of its century. Cruelty in relationships and cruel revenge, in contrast to the literature of ancient times, is marginalized and is no longer an example for the environment, but a sign of «tabloid literature» - which is a good indicator for society. The main question is: is narrative in literature really a trigger that increases violence? Or does the experience of violence in the literature reduce the level of violence? The study suggests that there is no stable correlation, and recent empirical studies confirm this. Hypothesis of Feschbach’s about the usefulness of cruelty in art has now been refuted by scientists. But we did not find sufficient confirmation of the alternative hypothesis about the pattern of copying cruelty: if a person reads about cruelty, he will not become more cruel. Very useful in this regard is the emergence in the literature of a discourse on the «circle of violence», which removed from the cruel characters a halo of «steepness» - they are now mostly depicted as unhappy people who have suffered in the past. It is no longer cool to be cruel - this is exactly the form of discourse in the future that should give another impetus to reduce the general level of cruelty. Discussing cruelty in literature gives us an opportunity to overcome it. But excessive emphasis on cruelty - aestheticization and admiration for cruel details will only hurt our feelings and will not bring any harm or benefit.

Fantastic Fauna in a Global Perspective: understanding composites in early Eurasian Antiquity

Ancient tombs and hoards across the Eurasian steppe call for a thorough revision of art-historical categories associated with pastoral societies from Mongolia to Crimea. This study focuses on one such category. “Animal style” is an umbrella term traditionally used to categorise portable precious metalwork ornamented with dynamic scenes of vigorous animal fights and entwined zoomorphic designs. With its emphasis on irregular animal anatomies and deeply rooted in a “pars-pro-toto” mode of expression, steppe imagery of fantastic fauna presents a useful case study in broader investigations of composites in the ancient world and their diffusion across cultural spheres. This study views beasts through a binary lens, the structured monsters of Greco-Roman thinkers and the organic composites of nomadic steppe artisans. In the Western canon, “composites” existed within a politically-manufactured framework of governable “otherness”, in which fantastic fauna conveys a certain tension with the exotic, unknown and uncontrollable East. Meanwhile, in the visual rhetoric of steppe artisans, monsters represented a tension with the (cyclical) shifts occurring in one's biota rather than the tumultuous events in one's constructed environment. This paper explores how the contrasting steppe pastoralist and sedentary imperial world-views came to define the various functions and meanings of “composites” in Eurasian Antiquity.