Vlucht uit Babel

In the period from about 1890 to 1960, there was a widespread belief that a universal language would make an important contribution to both material progress and international understanding. Alongside artificial languages such as Esperanto and national languages such as English and French, for a long time Latin also received serious attention as a potential world language of the future. This article provides an analysis of the discussion held in the Netherlands about the pros and cons of Latin as a modern world language. On the one hand, this analysis shows that due to a unique combination of properties, strong arguments could be made in favour of Latin. On the other hand, both its notorious difficulty and the problems raised by attempts at modernising its archaic vocabulary complicated the candidacy of Latin as a future lingua franca. The article concludes that underlying the ultimate failure of Latin as a modern world language was a misguided attempt to reinvent Latin as a ‘living’ language. The paradoxical lesson this failure teaches is that it is not the ‘life’, but precisely the ‘death’ of the Latin language that is able to maintain it for contemporary use.

Byzantijnse geleerden over Aristophanes

This article studies the reception of the comedies of the Athenian playwright Aristophanes in 12th-century Byzantium. It takes as its starting point various scholarly and didactic texts that facilitated this reception. These texts were written by Gregory of Corinth, John Tzetzes and Eustathius of Thessaloniki, who all used Aristophanes, and ancient literature more generally, in their teaching and scholarly practice. This article explores (1) what moral functions Byzantine scholars ascribe to ancient drama; (2) how they instruct Byzantine writers to weave elements of humour and ridicule into their own work by either imitating Aristophanes’ techniques or quoting his verses; (3) how they use the Athenian playwright as a model for correct atticizing language; (4) and how Tzetzes engages on a personal level with Aristophanes as a historical figure and with the comedies he wrote. This examination of the reception of Aristophanes in the work of Gregory, Tzetzes and Eustathius thus demonstrates the versatility of the Byzantine reception of ancient comedy.

Christenen in Bithynia-Pontus

The famous letters by Pliny the Younger and emperor Trajan about the Christian community of Bithynia-Pontus have traditionally been highly significant in the study of early Christianity. However, the letters have often been read in isolation. The rest of the correspondence between emperor and governor contained in the tenth book of Pliny’s Epistulae, meanwhile, has rarely been taken into account in a systematic way. This contribution will demonstrate that our understanding of the Christian letters is significantly enhanced by taking into account the underlying principles that shaped Roman provincial administration, and by placing Pliny’s interactions with the Christian community within the wider context of his duties as a Roman governor.

De prijs van de roem in de Ilias

Starting from the story of Iphidamas in Iliad 11, this article argues that the presentation of war in the Iliad and Odyssey is mostly negative, with strong emphasis on its many victims and the suffering and losses on both sides. Within this context, the idea of κλέος (‘fame’) is found mainly as a motivation to join the war or to engage in the fighting. The victims’ family and friends do not find comfort in it, as we can see very clearly in the cases of Patroklos and Hektor. Nor do the heroes themselves, confronted with a premature and often cruel death, find any comfort in the prospect of fame. Consequently, κλέος appears as a kind of illusion that tempts men to go to war, but in the end has nothing to offer them. Only later generations and people far removed from the actual events can enjoy the κλέα ἀνδρῶν.

Little epigraphy

Most well-known inscriptions are monumental texts carved on stone. In this contribution, on the other hand, we focus on small, often informal texts scratched or stamped on rocks, metal surfaces and pottery. To this type of so-called ‘little epigraphy’ belong for instance graffiti, ostraca, weights and measures, curse tablets, etcetera. Although the texts themselves are usually very short, together they constitute a large corpus.

Grafinscripties

This article offers a brief introduction to the most frequent type of inscription: funerary inscriptions or epitaphs. The article offers a chronological overview from the Archaic period to late Antiquity, with an emphasis on Athens. It opens with a brief discussion of the archaeological and ritual contexts in which funerary inscriptions were set up, followed by a discussion of archaic epigrams and the social strategies that lay behind them. This is followed by a discussion of public and private graves that shows how epigraphic habits changed over time. The article continues with a discussion of funerary epigraphic habits outside Athens and closes with a few examples of Christian epitaphs.

Rituele normen

This article is an introduction to a group of Ancient Greek inscriptions that may be called ‘ritual norms’ (also known as leges sacrae, ‘sacred laws’). These are epigraphical documents concerning rituals that are performed in the context of specific cults, and which are of a prescriptive character. The article discusses three key questions. In the first part of the article I aim to answer a basic question: what are ritual norms? The second question concerns the function of ritual norms. The third part of the article is about the way in which ritual norms acquire authority. How were they considered legitimate and enforceable? A separate section concerning authority is reserved for the use of tradition (anchoring and anchoring innovation) in this genre.