The mythopoetic parable of ‘Gigantomachia over being’ in Plato’s Sophist 246a4 ff. is neither a theoretical construction ad hoc of some general trends, nor a reference to a single contemporary debate, e. g., between Plato’s Academy and atomists in 4 th century BC. The controversy on the nature of being is described as a real battle on epic scale (ἄπλετος μάχη) between two camps, as a debate about fundamental problem of philosophy, that has always existed (ἀεὶ συνέστηκεν) and is still going on. In favor of the identification of the two camps primarily with the Ionian and Italian traditions in the pre-Platonic philosophy speaks the juxtaposition of the ‘Ionian and Italian Muses’ (Ἰάδες καὶ Σικελικαὶ Μοῦσαι) in the preceding context Soph. 242de. The ‘unreformed giants’ are the Ionian physikoi from Anaximander to Democritus, while their ‘divine’ adversaries, who reduce being (ousia) to immaterial forms, are the Pythagoreans, Eleatics and Platonists, as well as Socrates, who dismisses the Ionian περὶ φύσεως ἱστορία in Plato’s Phaedo and who upholds the theory of ideas in the Republic and Phaedrus. The ‘improved’ giants of the second generation are metaphysical dualists like Anaxagoras and Empedocles who admit incorporeal causes like Mind and Love alongside with matter, as well as Heraclitus, the Ionian Sophists and Antisthenes who combined ontological naturalism with teaching arete. The general scheme of the development of theories of archai in Aristotle’s Metaphysics is very similar: from those who recognized only material causes to those who admitted incorporeal moving cause (Anaxagoras and Empedocles).
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 is devoted to the history of stylometry and its development at an early stage. Stylometry is an applied philological discipline that considers style as a set of quantitative parameters. Stylometry arose on the material of classical studies. Using the example of the most reliable and authoritative stylometric method to date — Burrows’ Delta — the advantages and disadvantages of this type of analysis are examined. The genesis of the term “stylometry” is established. In the seminal book of G. Martynenko “Fundamentals of Stylometry” it is indicated that it was coined by the German classical philologist W. Dittenberger. The study reveals that the term “stylometry” actually existed in the 19th century in the meaning of ‘the art of measuring columns’, and it is not used in Dittenberger’s works. This term was introduced by W. Lutoslawski, who tried to solve the problem of periodisation of Plato’s dialogues. It turns out that “stylometry” was first used in a new meaning on May 21, 1897, during a report by W. Lutoslawski at the Oxford Philological Society. In Russia, the term first appears in a review in 1898 in the form стилометрия, and in Morozov’s 1915 article in the form стилеметрия, which became widespread in the Soviet academic community