Научный архив: статьи

This article argues that in the first verse of Catullus’ epigram 85, the commonly found translation of quare as ‘why’ in English versions since the 17th century, but particularly in translations produced in the last fifty years, cannot be accepted. In the context of Catullus’s poetry, with poems 72 and 75 offering an explicit background to and rationale for the contradiction in the poet’s feelings between love and hate, and in the light of the incontrovertible connotation of quare (or qua re) as ‘how’ in a passage of Terence’s Eunuchus, the correct translation of the word can only be ‘how’. Some suggestions are made to account for the origins and the persistence of the mistranslation. The translation as ‘why’ in the prose version in the 1912 Loeb edition edited by F. W. Cornish is suggested to have influenced a generation of English-speaking students, and Martial’s epigram 1.32 is invoked as a cause. But it is further argued that in taking Catullus’s epigram as a model for his own, Martial may have expressly intended to suggest that the meaning of quare as ‘why’ that was current in his time was different in that very respect from the connotation ‘how’ clearly intended by his predecessor.

In this piece, attention is once again drawn to the locus classicus of Euripidean sententious outbursts, lines 599–602 put in the mouth of Hecuba mourning her daughter Polyxena. Suggested for bracketing by W. M. Sakorraphos in 1893 and athetised by J. Diggle (1984) and D. Kovacs (1995) in their respective editions (although not in the editions of J. Gregory (1999) and K. Matthiessen (2010), the lines (and the whole passage 592–602) have also shouldered a weight of Euripidean Weltanschauung doctrines built on their slender frame. A brief overview of scholarly judgment, often overexacting, prompts one to occupy the middling ground allowing both for the possibility of the genuine character of the lines 599–602 and their relevance in context (and not only expressing the ideas current in Euripides’ times) with both birth and upbringing contributing to virtuous character. The metaphor in line 603 should not be considered a brave mannerism, or a marginal remark of some critic, but a marker of a change of topic, its archery imagery well on the side of trite

This article offers an overview of the Greco-Latin and early modern Jesuit sources of Stefan Iavorskii’s (1658–1722) three bilingual panegyrics addressed to his patron Varlaam Iasinskii, rector of the Kiev-Mohyla college (1669–1689), the Orthodox metropolitan of Kiev (1690– 1707), Hercules post Atlantem infracto virtutum robore honorarium pondus sustinens published in Chernihiv in 1684, Arctos Caeli Rossiaci in Gentilitiis Syderibus and Pełnia nieubywaiącey chwały w herbowym xiężycu (The Plenitude of Inexhaustible Glory in the heraldic moon), published in Kiev in 1690 and 1691. Both these works are prosimetric bilinguals (some sections are in Latin, others in Polish), testifying to a significant classical erudition of their author. However, Hercules is one most traditionally “classical” in its dispositio and elocutio, while the style of the other two, written after Iavorskii’s educational journey through Jesuit schools in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, is much more innovative, highly metaphorical, allegorical, relying on the argumentation of surprise (based on acumen- and argutia-theory expounded in the rhetoric of Jan Kwiatkiwiecz) and emblems due to an extensive use of combinations of multiple pictorial-verbal themes (especially in Pełnia)

This paper traces the semantic and constructional development of the complement-taking verb εὑρίσκω ‘find’ from Homeric Greek to Post-Classical Greek. First, the paper details the semantic development of εὑρίσκω using characteristics such as predicate type, semantic role of the subject and factivity. Subsequently, explanations are offered for the constructional development of εὑρίσκω, using insights from grammaticalization research such as reanalysis and analogy. In contrast to previous studies on Ancient Greek complementation which support the idea of a systematic Classical Greek opposition of factive participial versus non-factive infinitival complementation, this paper shows how bridging contexts of mental judgment εὑρίσκω with a participial complement do not follow this opposition as they are non-factive and changed their meaning (with reanalysis) before changing their complementation structure (through analogy). Also, by extending our view to the individual history of other cognitive predicates (ἐπίσταμαι, γιγνώσκω and οἶδα) the author shows that other cognitive predicates undergo similar developments from factive+object to factive+ACP to non-factive+ACI, although their individual histories are still in need of a systematic diachronic account. Thus, complementation patterns per period could be analysed in a more fine-grained way by analysing complementation patterns bottom-up from the semantic and constructional evolutions of individual predicates. Also, the findings from this paper provide evidence towards a diachronic solution of the so-called matching-problem: diachronically related semantic and constructional stages strongly motivate the choice of a specific complementation structure but absolute factivity oppositions in Classical Greek complementation are rather strong tendencies

Following the first edition of Manuel Álvares’ De institutione grammatica libri tres (Lisbon, 1572), the Portuguese text tradition of the celebrated grammar was completed with the 1573 pupil’s manual. Both the precise number of editions that appeared thereafter and what in a distant future might be developed into a stemma editionum remain unknown. In the context of ongoing bibliographic research, the present article offers an outlook on the beginnings of Alvaresian grammar in late 16th-century Europe by means of a presentation of how the grammars’ national text traditions emerged in Czech, French, German, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish and Spanish editions. Álvares’ grammar started to take on divergent national forms since its first publication for the purposes of the Bavarian Jesuit University of Dillingen, in which the volumes were distributed according to the official syllabus, thus moving beyond the division between teacher’s manual and pupil’s manual made by the author. Even though the more comprehensive ars maior also appeared in German and Italian editions, in the late 16th century the ars minor became particularly important due to its editions in France, Italy and Spain. There also appeared the Czech variant of the ars minor as well as the Lithuanian and Polish partial editions, whose textual constitution seems to correspond to the requirements of the respective syllabi.

The paper analyzes Ch. 24 of the 11th book of Aelian’s De natura animalium devoted to the so-called sea-leopard (πάρδαλις) and the oxyrrhynchus fish, both living in the Red Sea. Aelian compares the body colour of the sea-leopard to the mountain leopard, i. e. the snow leopard or the ounce (Panthera uncia Schreber, 1775). This comparison clearly demonstrates that the sealeopard is to be identified with the sand tiger shark or the spotted ragged-tooth shark (Carcharias taurus Rafinesque, 1810). This fish usually resides and hunts in the depths of the sea, but also swims to the coast and sometimes attacks the swimming people. The attacks of sand tiger sharks must have taken place in ancient times, so the fish was easily recognizable not only by the Greeks but also by the inhabitants of the Red Sea’s seashore. The Greek ichthyonym ὀξύ(ρ)ρυγχος refers to five different species of fish, but Aelian uses it to denote an oriental kind of shark existing in the Red Sea (NA 11, 24). The oxyrrhynchus shark has an elongated mouth, golden eyes and white eyelids, i. e. nictitating membranes, typical of sharks belonging to the order Carcharhiniformes. Its tail is oblong in shape and its fins are black and white. There are also pale and green parts of its body. On the basis of Aelian’s description it is possible to suggest that the unknown fish should be identified with the bignose shark (Carcharhinus altimus S. Springer, 1950).

This article discusses an intriguing text in Stobaeus’ Ecl. 1.25.3i about the sun’s movement as a spiral on a cylinder. The author offers an interpretation of this text and argue that it is about Empedocles’ conception of the solar trajectory during the year. After a preliminary attempt, an interlude is inserted on some strange theories, ascribed to Empedocles, about the two hemispheres of the heaven and two suns. Two of the more reliable theories attributed to Empedocles that are relevant in the context of this paper, namely the tilting and the eggshape of the heaven, as well as the problems of the size of the sun and the shape of the earth, are discussed in successive sections. This allows the author to illustrate some of his ideas on Presocratic flat earth cosmology. Prior to offering a visualization of the cosmos according to Empedocles, Bollack’s earlier attempt is subjected to a critical examination. In two additional sections of the article, the author claims that, according to Empedocles, the moon must move on a cylinder as well and that the image of the cylinder for movements of the sun and moon dates back to Anaximander

Detailed examination of the presence and use of Latin comic sources in Thomas More’s work has been the subject of little systematic investigation. Among other aspects, the variety of perspectives from which these sources are handled in More’s writings, and the diverse functionality that they are endowed with, make this analysis somewhat complex. The object of the article will be restricted to the analysis of some key mentions of Latin comic sources in a particularly significant letter from the point of view of More’s defense of humanism, such as the letter to Maarten van Dorp (1515). In addition, the density of allusions to Plautus and Terence is shown in a set of letters and, as a means of possible contrast, in More’s epigrammatic texts; an explanatory hypothesis of this presence is also proposed. The analysis contextualizes the place of the letter in which the aforementioned allusions occur, and examines them comparatively. It is suggested that the main functionality of the introduction of references to Latin comedians is to provide eloquent support to establish a significant part of the refutatio of the letter; these references make it possible to shed light on certain inconsistencies in the conduct of the addressee, which weaken the objectivity of his points of view and the correctness of his behavior: hence the Morean criticism of Dorp

The goal of the article is to review Dariusz R. Piwowarczyk’s recent works (2016; 2017; 2017 [bis]; 2019) on the origin of the Latin fifth declension, as well as to demonstrate the correctness of the dual explanation (Witczak 2015) not discussed or even mentioned by Piwowarczyk. The author is convinced that Latin, like other Indo-European languages, once had a separate dual number which disappeared in the pre-literary period. The loss of the dual number disturbed the declension system existing at the time and caused the need for the creation of a new declension class (the fifth declension). The laryngeal phoneme *h1 formed the basic dual ending in the Indo-European languages. Proto-Indo-European animate nouns of consonant stems created a strong form in the dual number, demonstrating the ending *-eh1 (hence IE. *-ē and Latin *-ē-), whereas inanimate nouns had a weak form (PIE. *-ih1, hence Lat. -ī in vīgintī ‘twenty’ and the oblique stem *-iē-, attested in Lat. aciēs, māteriēs etc.). Proto-Latin dual forms ending in *-ē (< PIE. *-eh1) referring to animate nouns, as well as dual forms ending in *-ī (< PIE. *-ih1) referring to inanimate nouns, underwent the process of collectivization and singularization: most of them gained the status of typical singularia tantum and then formed a separate class of nouns which had -ē- as the common feature. It is finally suggested that a large group of originally dual nouns (especially the so- called dualia tantum) formed the Latin fifth declension

This article offers yet another opinion concerning the 18th-century controversy surrounding St. Jerome’s level of knowledge of Hebrew and his Old Testament translation from the Hebrew truth (ex Hebraica veritate). Assurances that Jerome’s Latin rendition is based directly on the Hebrew biblical books made by the monk himself and by his contemporaries are widely challenged. Jerome’s testimony is not entirely credible as he tended to confabulate and prevaricate. Having retraced this dispute about the Stridon-born scholar, the authors of this article subject verse 8:15 of the Book of Deuteronomy to a thorough analysis. It is a peculiar and important fragment for the ongoing discussion due to the appearance of the Hebrew word צִ מָּ אוֹן. In the Greek version (LXX), it had been translated as δίψα (“dry land”). What is crucial here is the fact that a similar form, διψάς, exists in the Greek language. It is a term used for a venomous snake. Potentially mistaking “dry land” for a “snake” in the Hebrew language is not possible. That is why in Jerome’s translation of the Bible from the Hebrew truth such an error should not have occurred. Meanwhile, we can find exactly that mistake in the scholar’s rendition. In his Latin translation Jerome introduced the dipsas snake in lieu of the Hebrew צִ מָּ אוֹן (“dry land”). This article aims to explain why, in this very spot, the translator departed from the Hebrew original

This article deals with the structure of Horace’s Carm. 2, 3, in which the poet advises Dellius to cultivate calm and goes on to describe a luxurious picnic. Whereas other commentators since antiquity have connected Falernian wine with an anecdote of Quintus Dellius (Plut. Ant. 59, 4: “For he had offended Cleopatra at supper by saying that while sour wine was served to them, Sarmentus, at Rome, was drinking Falernian. Now, Sarmentus was one of the youthful favourites of Caesar, such as the Romans call deliciae.” [Tr. B. Perrin]), this article seeks another reason why this particular kind of wine should be mentioned here. The phrase interiore nota Falerni in verse 8 probably indicates that the wine chosen for the picnic was not only of good origin, but also a vintage one, and this trait of Dellius can be viewed as an extreme desire to pursue the joie de vivre: he not only goes for a picnic (which would be a moderate way of spending holidays, see e. g., Cic. Off. 3, 58), but he chooses the Falernian for it, and — moreover — the aged one. Thus, the poem to Dellius is contrasted to other well-known poems from Book 2, namely Carm. 2, 14 (to Postumus, who will not enjoy his rare wine himself) and Carm. 2, 10, where the famous ideal of aurea mediocritas is expressed

This paper sheds new light on two Greek texts accompanying Aeschylus’ Prometheus Vinctus, in the fifteenth-century manuscript Q No. 2 of the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg. The first text is a didactic poem on iambic versification, allegedly composed by Michael Psellos, and the other one is a mixture of book epigrams related to the subject of the Prometheus Vinctus. August Nauck studied the manuscript and published these texts. All further mentions of the manuscript depend on Nauck’s readings, which nobody seems to question. In the latest edition of Psellos, prepared by Westerink, the manuscript from St Petersburg has not been taken into account, albeit the editor mentions Nauck’s publication. As for the epigrams, they have been published several times, also without taking that manuscript into account. A new study of the codex shows that Nauck’s edition contains several minor misreadings, therefore, I propose a new edition, based on the St Petersburg manuscript, as well as other manuscripts bearing same or similar verses, which were, apparently, unknown to him. Analyzing the epigrams on Prometheus, I compare our manuscript with others which contain the same verses (usually in different order). I try to explain some of the mistakes in these texts and correct them, as well as to compare them with other readings.