The Methodist school was a significant force in the field of medicine in ancient times. One of the core beliefs of this school was that theoretical explanations of diseases and the knowledge of the anatomical structure of the body are speculative and worthless for medical practice. The regular deviation from these principles has been noted by historians of medicine (Van der Eijk, Lloyd, Hanson et al.). However, the reasons why they violate these principles and the circumstances in which they do so are still unclear. This article attempts to explain the motivation of Methodists, specifically Caelius Aurelianus, for using anatomical knowledge and identifying hidden causes of diseases. I will focus on Aurelianus’ mention of meninx and its connection to mental diseases, which clearly conflicts with the fundamental principles of Methodism. The article will examine the views of Methodists themselves on meninx as well as the theories of physicians such as Erasistratus and Asclepiades, whose ideas, as will be shown, influenced the formation of the Methodist doctrine. As the theoretical foundations of methodism were still being laid, the views on the anatomy and physiology of internal organs were already being applied in practice. Although many of these inherited notions have been eliminated, some have become firmly entrenched in medical practice, which often explains the inconsistency of the Methodists.
The only two surviving poems by Sulpicius Lupercus still remain practically unexplored. Until now, the main object of researchers’ attention has been the portrait of the avids, wherewith Sulpicius Lupercus’ elegy “De cupiditate” is concluded; despite this, the identity of these avids has not yet been proven. This paper makes another attempt to analyse this portrait. Into account is taken not only the ecphrasis itself, but also its place in the elegy. The analysis of the elegy’s composition shows that the poem is structured in general in accordance with the rhetorical canon of epideictic speech. The previously advanced hypotheses that the portrait depicts a certain barbarian tribe seem unconvincing: thus, the expression barbaricae opes, the literal understanding of which serves as one of the main arguments for the attempts to identify the avids from the poem with a certain barbarian tribe, can also be understood idiomatically, which casts doubt on the seemingly unconditional mention of barbarians in the poem. It is more reasonable to assume that the ecphrasis, which is clearly based on the device of grotesque, depicts the teachers of rhetorics mentioned in the elegy shortly before the portrait; this assumption is supported, among other things, by the tradition of Renaissance editions of this Sulpicius Lupercus’ elegy. A cumulative consideration of the elegy from a compositional point of view allows a conclusion that the discussed portrait serves as a final figurative argument in an ethical invective against avidity as such
A large group of adjectives in Apicius’ De re coquinaria is formed with the suffix -atus. Although they contain a suffix which is typical of the perfect participle, their base is not verbal, but nominal: this is their peculiarity. They are all adjectives referring to food; their meaning is possessing “the quality/condition expressed by the base-noun” (e. g. Apic. 8. 7. 14 liquamen piperatum). Many of them are Apicius’ creations and attested only in his cooking book (e. g. allecatum, coriandratus, syringiatus); a great number of them have a Greek origin. This paper proposes not only a semantic analysis of denominal adjectives with the suffix -atus, but also a comparison with adjectives ending in -osus, which have the meaning “full of ”. The formations in -atus of De re coquinaria are also examined according to the qualia theory, the principles of which are clearly recognisable in these adjectives. Apicius’ denominal adjectives in -atus can be compared to suffixed adjectives in some modern languages (Italian -ato, Spanish -ado, French -é), which express the concept of possession of a quality, and which derive from a noun, not from a verb, although they are formally identical to past participle, as it happens in Latin
In this article, three textually problematic passages from the Ciris, a variously dated short poem from the Appendix Vergiliana, are discussed. In line 63, it is suggested that B. Kayachev’s proposal to change erroribus auctor to auctoribus error should be accompanied by an emendation of istorum to est idem (the meaning of the line will then be “the mistaken versions of the less authoritative poets are actually not unanimous”). In line 90, it is proposed to read Aonisin… placeat instead of omnia sim… liceat (“let the Muses be benign to the idea of giving renown to my version of Scylla”). Greek forms of Dative in -sin often provoke similar nonsensical errors, and aoni- could be transformed into omnia uia loss of a at the beginning of the line and a misunderstood attempt to restore it above the text. In line 208, it is hardly possible to be sure what was the original reading in place of the transmitted iactabat (hardly appropriate and perhaps introduced by a scribe under the influence of the parallel passage in Verg. Ecl. 2.5), but it is argued that to the set of possibilities considered by the scholars one should add alternabat (meaning “relieved watch”)
This article compares the use of two similar ways of expressing relative future tense in Latin: the future passive infinitive and the construction fore/futurum (esse) ut. This construction is regularly found in the same contexts as the future infinitives, and may serve as an alternative for verbs lacking a supine form. What appears to be of particular interest is its widespread use in cases where a supine is available, and the future infinitive could have been used. Up to the present day, there have been very few studies on this topic. In the present study, the author aims to fill this gap and to examine the relevant syntactic constructions in the passive voice, to begin with a limited corpus of examples. Cicero’s texts were chosen as the material for the study, since they preserve the largest number of these forms, furthermore, such material allows us to conduct the study within the language of one author. The study was conducted with the help of the computer database PHI-5. Having examined the resulting sample, the author identifies tendencies typical for the use of the infinitive and the construction, as well as their pragmatic features and differences. The infinitive is used in objective contexts with a high degree of epistemic support and, as a rule, when there are valid reasons to believe that a certain event will happen. The fore ut construction in our corpus is chosen either to denote the events that were not destined to happen or to convey someone else’s opinion, and introduces a subjective and sometimes counterfactual overtone into the embedded predication. The set of verbs that occur as future infinitives and those used in the predication embedded under fore ut does not overlap, with few exceptions, which may be due to the different aspectual characteristics of these verbs.
This article examines the testimonia concerning Aeschylus’ purported brothers — Cynegirus and Ameinias — both of whom are said to have distinguished themselves during the Greco-Persian Wars. Cynegirus, a strategos, met a heroic death at the Battle of Marathon, while Ameinias earned renown for his bravery at Salamis. Although modern scholarship widely accepts Cynegirus as Aeschylus’ brother, the earliest extant testimony of their kinship derives from Heraclides of Pontus, later reiterated by an anonymous scholiast on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. The alleged kinship between Aeschylus and Ameinias, however, remains a subject of debate. This study aligns with the view that their association may stem from later conflation or errors within the ancient historiographical tradition. Regarding Aeschylus and Cynegirus, while Heraclides provides the primary testimony and the subsequent tradition is based on much later sources, their alleged fraternal relationship must be treated with due historiographical caution
In the second book of the Histories, Herodotus recounts a legend that attributes the establishment of the oracle of Dodona to Egypt’s influence: a more fantastical variant of the tale features a black dove capable of human speech, while a more realistic rendition identifies an abducted Egyptian priestess as the founder. Notably absent from Herodotus’ account are the Selloi, a group of ascetic diviners mentioned in the Iliad’s brief depiction of Dodona, where they are said to sleep on the ground and refrain from washing their feet, presumably to maintain a spiritual connection to earth. This absence of the ancient priesthood from the Histories led some scholars to conclude that the Selloi must have disappeared by the time of Herodotus, fully replaced by a college of priestesses said to derive their sacred knowledge from the Egyptian Thebes. This point of view was challenged lately, as more evidence for the continued presence of male priests in Dodona had been uncovered and cataloged. Hence it seems consequent to suppose that the exclusion of the Selloi from the Histories may have been entirely intentional on Herodotus’ part, since the existence of this college and its acknowledgement in the Iliad could be difficult to reconcile with a theory proposed in the second book, which suggests that Dodona had a foundational role in the early development of the Greek religion as a conductor of the Egyptian influence in the pre-Homeric Greece