Le présent article concerne l’influence de l’érudition humaniste sur les pratiques étymologiques du XVIe siècle, dont témoignent les ouvrages de référence néo-latins et les traités spéciaux de linguistique et d’histoire. Étant une partie importante de la recherche historique, qui reposait principalement sur des sources littéraires grecques et latines, l’étymologie ne pouvait qu’adopter certains principes et instruments importants de la philologie contemporaine, notamment la critique des sources. La règle principale était d’étudier les textes dans leur langue et leur forme d’origine et d’éliminer toute donnée corrompue ainsi que toute information non attestée par des sources écrites. Cela présumait que chaque texte avait sa propre histoire écrite, comprise principalement comme une détérioration progressive de son état, représentée par la tradition manuscrite, qui était sujette aux erreurs des scribes et aux interprétations erronées. Ce point de vue des humanistes sur l’histoire textuelle correspondait à celui sur l’histoire des langues, qui était traitée comme une corruption permanente et une dégénérescence inévitable de l’état noble et parfait de leurs ancêtres anciens. Visant à restaurer le texte original, la philologie utilisait l’emendatio comme remède contre les abus de scribes et les pertes textuelles; de même, les historiens des langues avaient leur propre outil, à savoir l’étymologie, pour reconstruire et expliquer la forme originale des mots (y compris la nomenclature des sciences). L’intersection des deux procédures est prise en compte dans l’article, qui montre comment les conjectures textuelles, la collation des manuscrits et l’interprétation graphique des erreurs de lecture ont été employées par les savants du XVIe siècle pour corroborer leurs spéculations étymologiques, qui formaient elles-mêmes l’une des voies de la réception et de la critique du patrimoine littéraire classique
This article attempts to provide an interpretation of a passage on the noun number written by the 5th-century grammarian Cledonius who composed a lemmatised commentary on Donatus’ Ars minor and Ars maior. The passage discussed here is a part of the explanation regarding the noun categories in Ars minor: Numerus, qui unum et plures demonstrat: et communis est numerus, qui et dualis dicitur apud Graecos, ut species facies res. (GL V 10. 19–20). Cledonius’ text confuses two terms dualis and communis, which normally signify different linguistic phenomena. Tim Denecker, whose article covers the history of the term dualis in Latin grammatical treatises, argues that dualis in this passage is indicating a pair and is equated to communis. The aim of the present work is to explain why these two terms have been confused. When comparing Greek and Latin, the Roman grammarians Charisius, Diomedes, Priscian, and Macrobius highlighted the absence of the dual number from Latin, whereas Donatus added it to the singular and plural exemplifying it with two nomina — duo and ambo. Having analysed all of Cledonius’ passages on dualis and communis and compared them with the original text of Donatus, one may notice that Cledonius did not make comments on Donatus’ observations concerning the dual number of duo and ambo. In the author’s view, the grammarian may have opined that the Latin language had no dual number at all, so that in his commentary Latin communis is juxtaposed to Greek dualis and both are opposed to singular and plural
This article revises current perspectives on the generic status, composition, and subject matter of Phoenician Women by Seneca. It adopts a new approach, focusing on selected elements of text organisation. In particular, emphasis is given to the construction of characters and the analogies and contrasts between them which were already of interest to ancient poetics and rhetoric. Moreover, the article refers to observations, accurate but isolated and largely ignored, made by scholars who recognised Seneca’s originality and suggested that his plays might have been inspired by the declamatory tradition and should be read in the context of evolving postclassical literature. By adopting this perspective, it becomes possible to bring together a large number of partial conclusions that are related to Phoenician Women as well as other plays by Seneca. What is more important, the work brings to light the purposeful composition of the drama and its thematic unity, allowing us to return to the MS versions that until now have been replaced by conjectures, which often distort the meaning of the text. After dismissing the emendations and adopting a new method of reading, Seneca’s Phoenician Women can be regarded as complete and well-organised. The play has certain characteristic features of a tragedy, of all Seneca’s dramas, it is the one most inspired by the genre of declamation and the poetics of Seneca the Elder’s anthology, and it is an example of the use of plot material typical of tragedy for presenting the problem of pietas in all its complexity
The present article aims to elucidate an interesting narrative that forms a portion of Aelian’s paradoxographic work Περὶ ζῴων ἰδιότητος (On the Characteristics of Animals, Lat. De natura animalium). The passage under discussion describes some horned animals of oriental origin that were involved in the annual fighting contests during a one-day competition held on the initiative of a “great king of India” — probably Chandragupta (4th–3rd c. BC), the founder of the Maurya dynasty. Aelian’s chapter (NA 15, 15) was perhaps taken from Megasthenes’s Ἰνδικά (Description of India). The passage includes two hapax legomena referring to two species of animals: †μέσοι† and †ὕαιναι†. The first of these should be identified with the Ladakh urial (Ovis orientalis vignei Blyth); cf. Prasun məṣé ‘ram, urial’ (< Vedic mēṣá- m. ‘ram’). Aelian’s exact description of the horned animals called †ὕαιναι† clearly demonstrates that the alleged “striped hyena” (Gk. ὕαινα) must represent the chinkara, i. e., the Indian gazelle (Gazella bennettii Sykes). The Indo-Aryan term for ‘chinkara’ (Ved. hariṇá- m ‘Indian gazelle’, hariṇī́- f. ‘female gazelle’; cf. Pa. and Pk. hariṇa- m., hariṇī- f.) suggests that the corrupted form in Aelian’s passage should be emended as ὑάριναι [hyárinai]. This seems a near-optimal adaptation of the Pali or Prakrit appellative háriṇā pl. ‘chinkaras’
Ἐπικράτεια and ἐπαρχία are two terms used by the ancient sources to describe the Carthaginian presence in Western Sicily. Due to a lack of information about the character and details of this presence, it is crucial to precisely understand the terminology employed by our sources and all its nuances. The article challenges the widely accepted opinion that the nouns ἐπικράτεια and ἐπαρχία can be treated as synonyms. To verify whether this assumption is correct or not, a careful analysis of how the ancient authors (Polybius, Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch) used both nouns, as well as other related forms, is conducted. To make up for the limited number of occurrences of ἐπικράτεια in the analysed corpus, the relevant part of the examination also includes the use of this noun in Strabo’s Geography. The analysis allows us to highlight a significant change in the meaning of the two terms between the 2 nd century (Polybius) and the mid-1st century BC (Diodorus). This change reflects a development in the Greek political and administrative vocabulary, which was adjusting to a new reality of the Mediterranean world being organised into Roman provinces. The conducted analysis also allows us to better understand the complexity of the Carthaginian position in Western Sicily
Matro of Pitane’s cento of Homeric verses, The Attic Dinner Party contains a puzzling episode in which the narrator throws sea-urchins, which he has apparently already eaten, among the feet of the slaves, where they clatter “where waves were washing the beach”. The slaves then draw out the spines “from the head”. Following Elena Ermolaeva’s comparison of Matro’s lines to the Unswept Floor mosaic, I suggest that his banquet took place in a normal dining room rather than on a beach or in a room with a window facing one. The floor of this room, being a pebble mosaic, could aptly be called a beach from which the slaves were washing the detritus of the meal, a procedure (as we know from Olynthus) the dining rooms of private houses were expressly designed to facilitate. This interpretation entails reading *λύματ ̓… κλύζεσκον for the manuscripts’ κύματ ̓… κλύζεσκε). The scribal alteration I postulate has the effect — unique in this poem, and therefore suspect — of reproducing an entire Homeric line unaltered. Lastly, the phrase “from the head” does not refer to whence the slaves are pulling the sea-urchin’s spines (for that will be from their own feet), but to where they came from in the first place: a sea-urchin’s head
Переход от силлабического к силлабо-тоническому стиху в русском стихосложении в конце 1730-х — начале 1740-х годов связан с деятельностью трех выдающихся поэтов: Василия Кирилловича Тредиаковского (1703–1769), Михаила Васильевича Ломоносова (1711–1765) и Александра Петровича Сумарокова (1717–1777). Реформа затронула в первую очередь двусложные и трехсложные размеры и подготовила выработку более сложных метров, в том числе силлабо-тонических аналогов для эолийских метров. Сапфический гендекасиллаб из них пользовался наибольшей известностью и распространенностью. Также и сапфическая строфа была весьма популярна в европейских литературах. Она состоит из трех сапфических гендекасиллабов и адония в четвертой строке. Русские поэты-силлабики охотно создавали рифмованные сапфические строфы. В одиннадцатисложниках цезура после пятого слога была обязательна, а ударения во всех четырех строках не были упорядочены. Такие сапфические строфы Тредиаковский включил в свой перевод галантного романа Поля Тальмана «Езда в остров любви» (Paris, 1663; СПб., 1730). В 1735 году Тредиаковский опубликовал «Новый и краткий способ к сложению российских стихов», ставший точкой отсчета для реформы русского стиха. В своем трактате поэт предложил, помимо прочего, и реформированную сапфическую строфу: гендекасиллабы в ней, по его мнению, состояли из шести хореев и должны были иметь три хореические стопы перед обязательной цезурой, причем третья должна была быть каталектической. Все строки оканчивались женскими рифмами. Во втором издании трактата (1752) Тредиаковский пересмотрел свое понимание сапфической строфы. Теперь он призывает видеть в русском сапфическом одиннадцатисложнике четыре хорея, между которыми вклинен дактиль с цезурой после первого слога. Под влиянием «Письма о правилах российского стихотворства» Ломоносова Тредиаковский приходит к убеждению о необходимости альтернанса, а потому считает, что первые два стиха в сапфической строфе должны быть с мужскими рифмами; как следствие они оказываются усечены до десяти слогов. В утраченном «Письме о сафической и горацианской строфах» (1755) Сумароков выразил резкое несогласие с этим воззрением Тредиаковского. Десятисложники в сапфических строфах были для него недопустимы; он был также против регулярной цезуры. Все же метрическую структуру сапфического гендекасиллаба он понимал так же, как и Тредиаковский. В 1755 и 1758 годах Сумароков опубликовал три стихотворения, написанных сапфическими силлабо-тоническими строфами. Часть из них с рифмами, а часть без; но цезура во всех них иррегулярна. В 1762 году Тредиаковский перевел две строфы из «Юбилейного гимна» Горация. Их форма позволяет заключить, что поэт учел мнение своего оппонента и потому отказался от десятисложников в них. Лишь в вопросе о цезуре он остался непреклонен
The article examines an unpublished inscription conserved in the Nerantzia Castle of Kos (Greece). It consists of four elegiac couplets that Coan scholar Stamatios K. Pantelidis (Παντελίδης) composed some time before 1879. It was supposed to be located in the facade of the school founded the year indicated in the inscription. Seemingly, after the earthquake which devastated Kos in the year 1933, it was relocated in the warehouse of the Nerantzia Castle in northern Kos along with many other inscriptions. On the one hand, it provides the possibility of knowing how stonegravers work, to what extent Greeks knew their very own language in its ancient form and the way they dealt when it came to use (then and now) unusual forms of the language. On the other hand, the inscription is relevant to the cultural history of Greece in the last years of Ottoman rule and in the years after it, as Kos was part of the Ottoman Empire until 1912, date in which it passed under Italian rule until 1947, when the isle was incorporated into the Hellenic Republic. Therefore the purpose is to clarify the historical and real circumstances of the inscription, as well as to analyze the compositional process of this dedicatory epigram from the metrical point of view (it contains many deviations from to the classical precepts), style and classical tradition. The inscription has not been previously studied due to its peculiar characteristics. Indeed, it is an epigram written in modern times but in an archaizing Greek (i. e. roughly respecting the rules of classical grammar), so it is not studied by neohellenists given the ancient character of its language, nor by classicists because it was composed in recent times
This article aims to put Latin impersonal passive into the context of covert categories, specifically pluractionality. I try to reanalyse six passages from the Roman grammatical texts, mostly compiled in Heinrich Keil’s Grammatici Latini, in which the meaning of Latin impersonal passives is considered. There are two groups of evidence. The first one (passages from Diomedes, Priscian, and frg. Bobiense de verbo) presents the impersonal passive as a linguistic strategy that shifts focus from an agent to a situation, while the second one (Diomedes and two excerpts of Servius’ commentaries on Virgil) concentrates upon the number of agents. In the last case, a verbal action is considered to be a collective one involving many people, and therefore, in my opinion, falls into the category of pluractionality. Being a diverse phenomenon, the term pluractionality includes participant plurality, which is realised either in a subject or in an object depending on whether the verb is intransitive or transitive. Intransitivity of the Latin impersonal passive forms, as it seems, may imply agent plurality rather than subject plurality, since impersonal passive constructions are subjectless. Furthermore, in my opinion, the evidence provided by Latin grammarians demonstrates a contraposition of the 1 st person singular, 1 st person plural and 3rd person singular passive forms
The piece deals with the interpretation of Prop. 2. 8. 21–24. These verses seem to be problematic and illogical over the years. In the poem, the speaker, deserted by his beloved Cynthia, imagines himself dead and then describes the heroine’s reaction to this disastrous event. Propertius thinks that she will be happy about his death and defile his grave. Then he suddenly turns to Haemon, who commits suicide in despair of the Antigone’s death, and after that threatens Cynthia to kill her. Firstly, it is incorrect to compare the righteous Antigone with the unfaithful Cynthia. Secondly, the decision to kill the beloved is inept. Some scholars transpose the verses in order to avoid the incoherence. Others try to interpret the passage, leaving the lines in their initial order, but they usually think that Propertius compares himself with Haemon and Cynthia with Antigone. The author of the article reconsiders gender roles in this comparison and suggests a new interpretation. There are also some examples from the Catullan and Propertian poetry, which show that the gender-inverted comparisons are widely used in ancient literature and especially in Roman love poetry of the 1st century B. C., in which they, probably, are part of a new literary strategy.
Several ancient authors tell a puzzling story of treason to murder Alexander the Great by presenting him with poison or poisonous water carried in a curious vessel — a hoof of a horse, a mule, or an ass. Porphyry of Tyre, citing Kallimachos and Philo the Paradoxographer, gives us a reason to believe that the mention of hoof-made vessels was a misinterpretation of hornmade chalices, or put otherwise, drinking horns. Presuming that the vessel in question indeed was a drinking horn, we are left with an unusual image — Alexander the Great perished after drinking the poisonous water from the horn of a hornless animal. We can look into the development of this legend and propose its origins by examining mutual features of two distinct traditions — the Greek legend of the river Styx and its lethal streams and the Indo-Iranian tradition of several miraculous features of a unicorn’s horn, attested in Iranian, Indian, and Greek sources. After the survey of relevant sources, we see that the horn from Philo’s story represented a legendary present of Indian rulers intended to save Alexander the Great from harm. Various layers of misapprehension transformed the legendary gift into a device contracted to harm him. This way, the author demonstrates two points: 1) that the story told by Porphyry in Styg. 375F is a part of an Indo-Iranian tradition about unicorns and their miraculous features; and 2) that the legend of Alexander’s poisoning represents a transformed and misinterpreted story of Alexander’s grandest gift.
This paper is an overview — in it I take a critical look at works that have come out in recent years about Antiphon. My primary focus is on four books: two scholarly works on Antiphon, one by Annie Hourcade and another by Michael Gagarin, an edition of the fragments of Antiphon’s treatises with a detailed commentary by Gerard Pendrick, and, finally, a new edition of Antiphon’s speeches prepared by Mervin Dilts and David Murphy. There is still a dispute among scholars about the authorship of the Corpus Antiphonteum. Some (the separatists) consider that there were separate authors for the speeches, on the one hand, and for the treatises, on the other — Antiphon the orator and Antiphon the sophist, respectively. Others (the unitarians) insist that there was a single author for both the speeches and the treatises. In the 19 th and the first half of the 20 th centuries, the separatists had the upper hand, but the situation slowly began to change, and now most scholars — rightly so in my opinion — argue for a single authorship. The separatists are compelled to divide the biographical testimonies of Antiphon between the orator and the sophist. But in the case of a single Antiphon, it turns out there is more than a little information about that person. In this paper, I present a review of scholarly opinion about evidence according to which Antiphon invented τέχνη ἀλυπίας and opened a psychotherapeutic clinic, where he tried to help his patients using verbal therapy. Some scholars call the tradition of the clinic into question. The separatists attribute any evidence about it to Antiphon the sophist. Like other scholars, I uphold the credibility of the clinic. I also take a look at the image of Antiphon presented by Xenophon (Mem. 1, 6.). Many scholars consider Xenophon’s story to be fictitious or reject it outright. The separatists believe that Xenophon calls Antiphon a sophist in the very first sentence of the sixth chapter in order to distinguish him from his namesake, Antiphon the orator. I think Xenophon’s goal is different. Socrates, in conversation with Antiphon during their second meeting, which Xenophon describes later on in the same chapter, likens sophists to πόρνοι (Mem. 1. 6. 13). Obviously, Xenophon calls Antiphon a sophist because he intends that the shameful implications of this comparison be applied first and foremost to him. Hourcade and Gagarin want to show that the author of the treatises and the speeches was one and the same person. Even though Pendrick is a separatist, the parallels he draws between the fragments of the treatises and individual passages in the speeches also, I think, favor the idea of a single Antiphon. I conclude that, thanks to the work of these scholars, Antiphon has, although not yet fully, been put back together again