In this paper, I demonstrate that the early Stoics adhered to a normative theory that may be called intentionalist: the moral significance of any action is not determined by its material content, but by the virtuous or vicious disposition of the agent’s soul and the intentions arising from this disposition. Since according to Stoics all people are divided into virtuous sages and vicious non-sages, all the actions of the former are morally right (κατορθώματα), whereas those of the latter are morally wrong (ἁμαρτήματα), even if they are materially identical. On the other hand, some statements in the Stoic fragments can rather be characterized as deontological: in this case, certain materially defined types of action (stealing, lying, adultery, etc.) seem to be presented as morally wrong in themselves. The paper’s central thesis is that such statements do not contradict the basic Stoic intentionalism but can be interpreted as consistent with it. Such an interpretation becomes possible under two conditions: firstly, if one takes into account how exactly the notions of κατόρθωμα and ἁμάρτημα relate to the Stoic notions of appropriate and inappropriate action (καθῆκον and παρὰ τὸ καθῆκον), and, secondly, if one examines the Stoic position on the moral status of lying, which is very revealing in this respect
The article aims to analyze the use of the term concessivus/concessiva ‘concessive’ in Latin grammatical texts which make up Corpus Grammaticorum Latinorum and Digital Library of late antique Latin texts, and to consider the concessive meaning as a grammatical category. A number of grammatical sources (Probus, Ars of Diomedes, Victorini sive Palaemoni Ars, Ars of Cledonius, Explanationes) place the category of concessivity among the verbal categories, namely modus ‘mood’, while in others this term is not mentioned. The text of Diomedes is also notable for the fact that concessivity is included in the concept of species, a term that includes heterogeneous grammatical phenomena among Roman grammarians. At the same time, the grammarian identifies not one meaning of concession, but two, which are defined by the terms — species concessiva (describes situations that are undesirable for the speaker in the present and future) and species affirmativa (describes situations that did not actually happen). All the three terms in the title of this paper correspond to coniunctivus concessivus and indicate the same grammatical form — perfect subjunctive, e. g. feceris ‘even if you did’. In modern linguistics, the meaning of concession is expressed not only by the perfect subjunctive, but also by the present subjunctive, and, thus, does not have a unique formal expression, as in ancient linguistics. I suppose that concession in the Latin language falls under the scope of covert grammatical category, whereas concession, as it was presented in Roman grammars, can be treated as an overt one
This paper presents a new hypothesis concerning the prologues of Seneca’s Hercules Furens, Agamemnon, and Thyestes. It provides an interpretive alternative to the controversies associated with the current reading tradition, which places superhuman and protatic characters speaking in the opening acts of these plays on the same level of fictional reality as other heroes, or subordinates them to figurative construction. According to the proposed hypothesis, the specific nature of these three scenes may be the result of applying the convention known, with little variation, from several other dramas in which the ghosts disturb the sleeping. The argumentation emphasises the paradigmatic nature of these opening scenes, which end with a formula setting them at the close of the night. It also points to the fact that in the light of the new assumptions, these prologues — redundant in their expository and anticipatory function — play an important role in structuring the dramatic action. Moreover, in the context of the events that follow them, their content can be explained in terms of the dream theory known from the rationalising philosophical discourses of antiquity. Finally, proposed reading of these scenes is based on the assumption of continuity between the discursive and poetic activity of the author
According to the author of the article, Mithridates VI Eupator’s letter to the Parthian monarch Arsaces in Sallust’s Historiae does not reproduce the genuine document from the personal archives of the Pontic king as some researchers believe. The opinion that Sallust criticized Roman politics under Mithridates’mask is rejected; many scholars consider this letter to be a condemnation of deep moral decline of the Roman society. On the contrary, the Roman writer attributes to the Pontic king the weak and vulnerable arguments based on the false facts (at least from the Roman point of view) to discredit his (and not only his) criticism of Roman foreign policy. He calls the Romans “strangers without a homeland, without parents”, but it is naturally that Romans themselves did not think in this way. The author objects to E. Adler, who believes that most of Sallust’s readers did not know history well enough to mark the distortions of facts in Mithridates’ letter. There is every reason to believe that Sallust was counting on an educated public that would be able to appreciate these distortions and their meaning. The author thinks that Mithridates’ argumentation looks like a parody of the anti-Roman propaganda and it might have been perceived as such by Sallust’s readers.
Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, in his Saturnalia, draws upon the Platonic archetype in making overt allusions to the Symposium and yet follows Athenaeus, whose work he seems to know thoroughly, albeit does not acknowledge its influence openly. Besides the Greek paradigms, Macrobius used Roman models, i. e., Cicero’s dialogues, to infuse his literary banquet with Roman flavour. The author of Saturnalia was severely criticised, especially by representatives of the Quellenforschung movement in the second half of the 19 th century, for allegedly being a poor plagiarist. His compilatory method is described in this article, and two other plausible Macrobius’ sources are proposed: Juvenal’s Satires and Seneca the Younger’s On Tranquility of the Mind. In Roman History Ammianus Marcellinus depicted the people inhabiting Rome of his times as degenerate parasites hostile to any form of intellectual activity who fritter away time on vulgar entertainment and obsessively overfeed themselves. Many scenes of so-called sober merriment shared by the prominent Roman personages of the IV c. AD were, in all probability, introduced to Saturnalia to counterbalance Ammianus Marcellinus’ harsh criticism of Roman morals. Macrobius’s familiarity with both Juvenal and Seneca manifests itself in the list of similes, yet, as the author of the present article proposes, there are passages in the oeuvre of both writers that may have instilled the vision of frugality typical of Romans in Macrobius’s mind, so that he may have used images borrowed from both earlier writers to Saturnalia
This article deals with the question of possible reasons for Conrad Gessner quoting an aphorism from Julian the Apostate’s letter (Ep. 23, to Ecdicius, prefect of Egypt) under the name of Marcus Aurelius in the preface to his Bibliotheca universalis, the first European universal bibliography (1545). Basing on the articles in Bibliotheca devoted to the above-mentioned authors, we can conclude that Gessner was directly acquainted with Julian’s letters (he obviously relied on the collection of Greek letters published by Aldus Manutius in 1499 under the title Epistolae diversorum philosophorum, oratorum, rhetorum), whereas no texts of Marcus (including fragmentary ones) were available to him by 1545. The topic of the search for a library and the question of how to treat the books written by religious opponents, which occupy a central place in Julian’s letter to Ecdicius, must have attracted Gessner’s attention, especially since the solution proposed by Julian turned out to be consonant with Gessner’s thoughts expressed in Bibliotheca. Thus, the false attribution of the quotation, undoubtedly deliberate, was, on the one hand, to prevent possible reproaches from conservative readers for quoting an anti-Christian author, and, on the other hand, to draw attention of a competent reader to Julian’s text
In Roman literature the negative image of a stepmother exists at least from the Late Republican times onwards. The Roman authors underline the cruelty of stepmothers and their mistreatment of stepchildren. Sometimes the amorous stepmother wants to seduce her adult stepson and, after the latter repudiates her love, begins to victimize him. In Latin declamations the noverca is often presented as a venefica who, motivated mainly by quarrels over inheritance, aims to poison her stepson (or sometimes husband; in this case she tries then to shift the blame onto the stepson). Cicero, when in 66 B. C. he defended in the court a Roman knight A. Cluentius Habitus, exploits these negative stereotypes extensively. One of the main characters in his speech Pro Cluentio is the mother of his client, Sassia, who, according to Cicero, is the true soul of the accusation against Cluentius. Cicero presents Sassia not as a mother, but as a saeva noverca who hates her own son and wants to destroy him. The skilful use of these (and some other) stereotypes, which were undoubtedly shared by a large part of Cicero’s audience, as well as corresponding literary topoi probably contributed significantly to the success of Cicero’s defence.
Albrecht von Eyb (1420–1475) — was a canon, lawyer, and writer, one of the first northern humanists of the 15 th century. Eyb went down in the history of German literature primarily as the author of a treatise on marriage (Ehebüchlein, 1472) and as the first translator of Plautus’ comedies (part of Spiegel der Sitten, 1474). These significant works were preceded by the first humanist textbook of rhetoric written in Germany (Margarita poetica, 1459), which was the result of a 15-year stay in Italy and acquaintance with the humanist culture of the time. This article studies a cycle of Latin works (1451), Eyb’s first attempt at writing, which were later partially included in his Margarita. The four Latin opuscula, which I call here the ‘Bamberg Cycle’, were composed during Eyb’s one-year visit in Bamberg, when he was forced to interrupt his studies for a while to secure an income from his prebenda. The works of the cycle are united by the young author’s ambition to imitate humanist literature of his time, from which he borrows not only themes but also form. While it remains impossible to identify the precise audience for these works, or the reason that prompted Eyb to write them, a closer look at these works-exercises, which remain in the shadow of the author’s more successful works, allows us to trace the ways in which the ancient and humanist heritage was received and adapted. Thus, the works of the ‘cycle’ become important material not only for the study of Albrecht von Eyb’s writings, but also for the formation of humanist identity in mid-15 th-century Germany, at a time when the institutionalisation of the movement and its further flourishing were only just emerging
In chapter 41 of Petronius’ Satyricon, a boar is served in a hat (pilleatus) during Trimalchio’s feast, which puzzles the protagonist Encolpius. The interpretation of the passage considered in the article (Petron. Sat. 41. 3) involves a number of difficulties, which all commentators note. Firstly, the reader needs to decide whether the case of summa cena is accusative or nominative. The second difficulty has to do with the meaning of the adjective summus. The third question concerns the meaning of the verb vindicasset. And the last and most crucial question deals with the fact that both cena and aper can function as the subject of the verb vindicasset. The author of the article looks into the opinions of various scholars and offers several arguments for the manuscript reading, which enables us to restore the final -m in summa. The author examines examples with the verb vindico which means “to claim a legal right to” and draws attention to the fact that in such cases the subject is more often an animate noun. In order to understand which word cena or aper is a more suitable candidate for the function of the subject in the passage under consideration, the author analyses the use of these words as subjects in other texts. The examples of the personification of cena are found mainly in poetry, whereas the word aper is discovered in one example which contains a verb usually used with animate subjects (intrare). The latter can be regarded as an additional argument for animateness of aper and its functioning as the subject of the sentence cum heri… vindicasset
This article deals with the conflict between mercy and just retribution in the work of Dracontius, a Roman poet from Vandal Africa of the 5th–6th centuries. This conflict is characteristic of many works by Dracontius, but the scholars have not yet reached a complete consensus on how the author views resolution or what he regards as more important. This paper attempts to unravel the rhetorical tangle woven by Dracontius through an analysis of the two poems united by the time of creation, the theme of the Trojan War, and a number of shared motifs: “The Abduction of Helen” and “The Tragedy of Orestes”. The conclusion is drawn that the trial, which formally appears only once in the finale of “The Tragedy”, actually recurs more frequently in these works, although not explicitly indicated. In particular, the opening scene of “The Abduction”, which features the prophecies of Helenus and Cassandra and their proposal to kill Paris, is built on the same principles as the trial of Orestes that concludes “The Tragedy”. They also correspond to Orestes’ seemingly extrajudicial retribution against Clytemnestra. The idea of connecting the Trojan War, the massacre in the house of Atrides, and the trial of Orestes in a legal (or rather, quasi-legal) context and presenting it to the reader in this form had already arisen in ancient literature before Dracontius. Such attempts can be found in Aeschylus, whose Oresteia is considered one of the primary likely sources for the Carthaginian poet. In Dracontius, this idea is developed and given a new, original expression, the treatment of which directly affects the understanding of both the stated problem — mercy vs justice, and the general meaning of the poems
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