That the Vergilian commentary by Aelius Donatus – one of the most influential late-antique commentaries that have not survived – was extant in the ninth century and available to some Carolingian scholars is still a widespread belief. The evidence in support of this thesis is said to have been provided by the Harvard Servianist J. J. H. Savage in three articles published between 1925 and 1931. In these articles, Savage claimed that a few marginal notes in one of the (...) ninth-century primary witnesses to the DS scholia, the so-called ‘Vergil of Tours’ (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Ms. 165), were drawn almost directly from Donatus’ commentary and that a marginal note in a roughly coeval Servian witness (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Ms. 363) provided information about a place where a copy of the commentary could be found. A re-examination of the two manuscripts shows that the evidence adduced by Savage does not stand scrutiny and that the terminus post quem for the loss of Donatus’ commentary should be antedated by at least one century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aelius Théon: ProgymnasmataGeorge A. KennedyMichel Patillon, ed., avec l'assistance pour l'Arménien de Giancarlo Bolognesi. Aelius Théon: Progymnasmata. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1997. clvii + 229 pp. ( 1-120 double). Price not stated. (Editions Budé)Progymnasmata, handbooks of preliminary exercises in composition, are important sources for understanding Greek and Roman education and rhetoric and equally important in that the exercises they describe, including narrative, [End Page 476]fable, chria, (...) encomium, ekphrasis, synkrisis, prosopopoeia, and others, provided topics for literary genres in prose and poetry. Of the four surviving Greek treatises on progymnasmata, by or attributed to Theon, Hermogenes, Aphthonius, and Nicolaus, Pseudo-Hermogenes and Aphthonius were the most influential. There are good editions of them by Hugo Rabe and of Nicolaus by Joseph Felton, all in the Teubner series. Theon's work is the earliest treatment and in some ways the most interesting, for it shows the system of rhetorical education in a developing stage and, since it is addressed to teachers rather than to students, it has much to say about pedagogical method. It has, however, been available only in reprints of Leonard Spengel's Rhetores Graeci(II 59-130), originally published in 1854, and in copies of a dissertation by James R. Butts (Claremont Graduate School, 1986). The new Budé Theon, with its lengthy introduction, French translation, and extensive learned notes, at last makes the work accessible to scholars in its full form.The Greek manuscripts of Theon's treatise break off abruptly in the discussion of the exercise for and against a law and lack chapters at the end where Theon discussed reading aloud, listening, paraphrase, elaboration, and contradiction. In addition, the original order of chapters was altered by some editor in late antiquity to conform better to what is found in Pseudo-Hermogenes and Aphthonius. Forty years ago Italo Lana projected a new edition, restoring the original sequence, and published a valuable study of the Greek textual tradition (Turin 1959), but he never completed the edition. The probable reason is that about that time the existence of a full translation of the work into classical Armenian had come to be known from two manuscripts in the State Library in Erivan, Armenia. Butts was aware of the existence of the Armenian translation but had no direct access to the contents.The Armenian translation was made from a Greek text before the rearrangement of the chapters and before the loss of the concluding pedagogical chapters. Patillon, in collaboration with Bolognesi, has reconstructed the Greek text on which the translation was based. It was so literal as to be almost incomprehensible in itself, but by comparison with the Greek in the large part of the work where both survive it has proved possible to reconstruct the Greek original with some probability. Patillon makes much use of this reconstruction throughout his text and apparatus and prints the Armenian text of the otherwise lost chapters, with French translation but without the Greek reconstruction.On the basis of a notice in the SoudaTheon is probably to be identified with Aelius Theon of Alexandria. There is reference in a newly discovered part of the text (Patillon, p. 106) to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, which gives us a date after the first century B.C., and a possible reference to Theon in Quintilian (9.3.76), suggesting Theon may have been writing in the first century after Christ. The name Aelius might indicate a Hadrianic date but probably came into use in Egypt after the prefecture of Aelius Gallus in the Augustan period. [End Page 477]In any event, the work is clearly the earliest of the four major progymnasmatic treatises and has similarities to the Latin discussions of the exercises by Quintilian (1.9) and in Suetonius' De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus.Although there is much that deserves attention in the introduction and notes of this edition, readers will perhaps most want to know about passages where new readings in the Greek make a difference to the meaning and interpretation of passages, and also about the contents of the chapters that survive only in Armenian, here published for the first time. References are to page and line... (shrink)

Among the works of Aelius Aristides is preserved one entitled the Rhodian It concerns an earthquake which has recently struck the city of Rhodes, and since Keil's edition of 1898 it has usually been considered spurious. The work reproduces a true speech, not something like an open letter: the clearest sign is when the author uses the deictic pronoun τοετ, ‘this here’, of the place in which he is speaking . One question is best discussed at the outset, since (...) later it will prove vital to the question of authenticity: does the speaker claim to have been in Rhodes at the moment of the earthquake? Keil assumed without argument that he does. He had clearly visited the city before the disaster as well as after it , but despite the vividness of his descriptions he nowhere says that he was present, and this reticence surely implies that he was not; and if he had been it is odd that he should talk of ‘the actual climax of the thing that befell you’ , using the second person plural. I infer that the speaker had not been present, but gave the speech several months after the event ; in the last part of this paper I will argue that he is Aristides, stopping at Rhodes on his wayback from Egypt to Smyrna in or about 142. (shrink)

In his book Περὶ τῆς τοῦ λόγου συντάξεως Michael Syncellus includes a section on the rules for accenting prepositions that occur in anastrophe. This section is also part of the chapter on the accentuation of prepositions preserved in the Τονικὰ παραγγέλματα by John of Alexandria, an important epitome of Aelius Herodian's lost work Περὶ καθολικῆς προσῳδίας. Further below, Michael's treatment of the various functions of the conjunction ἤ/ἦ again presents very strong similarities with the corresponding unit of the chapter (...) on the accentuation of conjunctions in the Τονικὰ παραγγέλματα. In this article I first argue that Michael's sections, which have gone entirely unnoticed by students of the Cath. Pr., have drawn directly upon the Cath. Pr., and I identify the ways in which they add to our picture of Herodian's and John's aforementioned works. Then I turn my attention to John's chapter on the accentuation of prepositions: I provide additional evidence to support Eduard Hiller's view that it does not form a coherent whole, and I discuss the implications of this problematical structure for defining the contents of Book 18 and the Appendix of the Cath. Pr. (shrink)

In the first act of Terence'sAndria, we find a dialogue between the old man Simo and Sosia, the freedman, with the former explaining why he has decided to arrange a false wedding for his young son Pamphilus. He has, in fact, learned that his son, despite being betrothed, has had a relationship with another girl and that—quite a serious matter—the fiancée's father, Chremes, has heard about the clandestine affair. In verses 144–9 Simo reports on the not-altogether friendly meeting he has (...) had with Chremes, who is furious about the complete disrespect that has been shown to his daughter; Simo's only defence is to attempt to deny the truth (146:ego illud sedulo negare factum). (shrink)

Among Aristides' extant works there are five speeches concerning the city of Smyrna, namely the first Smyrnaean oration , a monody for Smyrna , a letter to I Marcus and Commodus concerning Smyrna , a palinode for Smyrna and the second Smyrnaean oration . The historical context and purpose of Orr. 18, 19 and 20 are well known and uncontroversial. In contrast, although the dating of Orr. 17 and 21 relative to the others is not in doubt, their context and (...) purpose have been divergently interpreted. In this note I will reargue the case that the dominant modern scholarly tradition, which conceives the speeches as invitations to the emperors Marcus and Commodus respectively to visit Smyrna, is wrong. Rather the speeches were addresses of welcome to two proconsuls, father and son, on their respective arrivals in Smyrna. Secondly, I will briefly indicate the general significance of this identification. (shrink)

Varro's De lingua Latina is a treasure trove of information. Of the originally twenty-five books, six have come down to us more or less complete. Among these, Books 5–7 give us many hundreds of etymologies, and Books 8–10 discuss the question whether Latin morphology is regular or not. What Varro rarely comments on is sociolinguistic variation. The sociolinguistic comments in Varro's work can almost be counted on one hand. For instance, in 5.162 Varro remarks that cenaculum, from cena ‘dinner’, means (...) ‘attic’ in Roman Latin, but that the original meaning was, as one might expect, ‘dining-room’, a meaning preserved in the non-Roman dialects of Latium, Falerii and Corduba in Spain; the meaning also lives on in religious uses in Lanuvium. In 7.96, Varro tells us that some words are pronounced with -ae- by some, but with -ē- by others. We know that non-Roman varieties of Latin monophthongized -ae- earlier than the Roman dialect did. Varro mentions pairs like scaena / scēna ‘stage’, a loan from Greek σκηνή, which shows that -ae- is hypercorrect here. Interestingly, only in one such pair is the variant with -ē- ascribed to country people, in the name Maesius / Mēsius, and this is indeed the only pair where the diphthong -ae- is original rather than the result of hypercorrection. (shrink)

Based on a new and complete collation of manuscripts and ancient editions, this paper will discuss some stemmatic and textual problems concerning the “Excerpta de comoedia” attributed to Aelius Donatus.

The spirit of Aelius Donatus must be uneasy of late years; so many scholars have attempted to evoke his ghost. Professor H. J. Thomson professes to see in the additional notes to Servius an image once removed from the true Donatus. ‘The question’, he writes, ‘how far we can assume that the words of Donatus are directly reproduced [in the additions first published by Daniel ] can hardly be satisfactorily answered.’ That Donatus was not the immediate source of D, (...) Thomson endeavours to show from three instances, in two of which we know for certain, either from the Glossaries or from Servius himself, the substance of a part, at least, of the note of Donatus on these passages. In the other the argument rests on the comparative meagreness of the note in the enlarged Servius. In all three cases, according to this theory, we have a rehandling of the D comment. The note on the passage from the Aeneid has already been discussed by Professor Thomson in his study of the Virgil scholia in the Abstrusa glossary. The conclusions reached there are repeated, though perhaps not so positively, in the article under discussion. I hold with Professor Rand that we have in Servius auctus substantially the voice of Donatus, though in a fragmentary form, due to the work of a compiler who, with Servius as a basis, has worked in with more or less success explanatory matter which departed from, or was an addition to, the information supplied by an interpreter who himself derived most of his material from Donatus. (shrink)

Among the works of Aelius Aristides is preserved an address to an unnamed ‘king’. The prevailing view in this century has been that it is addressed to a third-century emperor, and was attributed to Aristides in error. In an article published in 1972 , 134–52), I argued that the speech was genuine, and was delivered by Aristides in 144 before Antoninus Pius. In a recent article in this journal , 172–97), Stephen A. Stertz has undertaken to rebut this view, (...) and advances a novel one: the speech is a school exercise written in the third or perhaps the fourth century, and does not refer to any particular ‘king’, not even necessarily a Roman emperor. Rather than attempt to answer all of Stertz's arguments, I have selected as samples one each from several diverse fields. Manuscript tradition. In his first paragraph, Stertz suggests that the manuscript tradition of the Eis basilea itself impugns its authenticity. ‘The oration is entitled єς βασιλέα in three manuscripts and єς τόν ατοκρτορα in another. It has been pointed out that in the former group of manuscripts the title is not preceded by the words ριστεδου λόγος, thus casting doubt on Aristidean authorship' . The accompanying footnote refers to Keil's apparatus ad loc, and the reader might infer that this argument is borrowed from Aristides’ foremost editor. What Keil said was: ‘Titulus ες βασιλα STC : єς τòν ατοκρτορα U et in indice D m recentiss.’. (shrink)

Read audit in artes for the transmitted audet in artes in Gratt. 498. The correction has the effect that the phrase audere (ardere Gronovius) in proelia in Verg. Aen. 2,347 no longer has linguistic support.

Ekphrasis is familiar as a rhetorical tool for inducing enargeia, the vivid sense that a reader or listener is actually in the presence of the objects described. This book focuses on the ekphrastic techniques used in ancient Greek and Roman literature to describe technological artifacts. Since the literary discourse on technology extended beyond technical texts, this book explores 'technical ekphrasis' in a wide range of genres, including history, poetry, and philosophy as well as mechanical, scientific, and mathematical works. Technical authors (...) like Philo of Byzantium, Vitruvius, Hero of Alexandria, and Claudius Ptolemy are put into dialogue with close contemporaries in other genres, like Diodorus Siculus, Cicero, Ovid, and Aelius Theon. The treatment of 'technical ekphrasis' here covers the techniques of description, the interaction of verbal and visual elements, the role of instructions, and the balance between describing the artifact's material qualities and the other bodies of knowledge it evokes. (shrink)

The early Stoics: Zeno of Citium. Persaeus of Citium. Cleanthes of Assos. Chrysippus of Soli. Aratus of Soli. Antipater of Tarsus. Boëthus of Sidon.--Epicurus.--The school of Aristotle: the Peripatetics (Theophrastus).--The Sceptics.--Deification of kings and emperors.--Sarapis.--The historians: Polybius. Diodorus of Sicily.--Posidonius.--Popular religion.--Philo of Alexandria.--The Stoics of the Roman Empire: Musonius Rufus. Cornutus. Epictetus. Dio (Chrysostom) of Prusa. Marcus Aurelius.--Second-century Platonists: Plutarch. Maximus of Tyre. Numenius.--Second-century believers: Pausanias. Aelius Aristides.--Second-century scepticism (Lucian of Samosata).--The hermetic writings.--Gnosticism (Valentius).--Neoplatonism: Plotinus. Porphyry. Iamblichus. Christian criticism.--The (...) last word. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Discussions ARISTOTLE'S ALLEGED "REVOLT" AGAINST PLATO Hermippus' most conspicuous contribution to Aristotle's biography probably was his determined effort to depict Aristotle as the founder of an original school of philosophy which was wholly independent of Plato and Platonic teachings. Among the several and, in all likelihood, fanciful stories about Aristotle he invented or propagated, the most startling was the account, subsequently widely accepted (and widely exploited by (...) the detractors of Aristotle), that after having been a disciple of Plato for a while, he seceded from the Academy and from Plato's philosophic teachings while Plato was still alive. 1 Accordingly, he owed little to Plato and to the Academy. This story, invented and propagated by an inveterate Peripatetic (Hermippus), was intended to demonstrate the original philosophic genius of Aristotle which developed in complete independence of Plato and necessitated a break with the master's teachings. In devising his argument, Hermippus might have made use of a report, found in some of Aristotle's ancient biographers, that a few brash young men (members of the Academy?) revolted against Plato and, in a spirit of independence, defiance and antagonism, attempted to start a school of their own which would rival the intellectual standing of the Academy. 2 Hermippus, it appears, subsequently identified these young "rebels" with Aristotle, a substitution convenient to Hermippus" aim to depict Aristotle as a wholly independent and totally original philosopher who owed nothing whatever to Plato and his teachings. In all likelihood, Diogenes Laertius' statement that Aristotle "seceded from the Academy while Plato was still alive," a is just an echo either of a statement made by Hermippus himself or is a conclusion drawn from the several unpleasant stories about Aristotle invented and reported by some of Aristotle's detractors. According to these derogatory stories, there existed many serious personal as well as doctrinal 4 disagreements or rifts between Plato and the Stagirite--disagreeDiogenes Laertius, V. 2. See also Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, XV. 2. 3, and ibid., XV. 2. 13 (Aristoxenus); Aelian, Varia Historia, IV. 9; Theodoretus, Graecorum Affectionum Curatio, IV. 46; St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, VIII. 12; Philoponus, Comment. in Aristotelis Analytica Posteriora, CIAG, vol. XIII, part 3, pp. 133, 30 ft. 2 See Aelius Aristides, Oratio XLVI, 249. 10. See also note 1, supra. s Diogenes Laertius, V. 2. See also Vita Aristotelis Marciana 9; Vita Aristotelis Latina 9. 9 See, for instance, Plutarch, Adversus Coloten 14 (Moralia, III5A); Cicero, Academica I. 9. 33; Eusebius, op. cir., XV. 2, passim; Diogenes Laertius III. 37; Justin Martyr, Cohortatio ad Graecos 5 (Migne, PG. vol. VI. p. 247); Cyrillus, Contra Julianum II. 47; Proclus, [91] 92 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY ments whichmarred the relations between these two men and which were indicative of Aristotle's ingratitude, bad taste and unwarranted conceit. The report of Diogenes Laertius, in an oblique manner, may also refer to the fact that already during his active association with the Platonic Academy (367-348 B.c.), that is, in his On (the) Ideas and On the Good, Aristotle had begun to disagree with, and criticize, some of Plato's fundamental teachings. It may also, in a distorted form, refer to the following specific incident which, however, cannot be verified: According to Aristoxenus, during the absence of Plato in Syracuse (and while Heracleides of Pontus was the "acting scholarch" of the Academy),5 some unnamed young members of the Academy, or "students" or, perhaps, some "outsiders " attempted to start a rival school (within the Academy?).6 As a matter of fact, Aelian, who apparently dramatizes this incident, reports that during Plato's last years, that is, some time after Plato's return from his third and last voyage to Syracuse, a serious conflict or confrontation arose within the Academy. Aristotle, together with some of his friends, or "conspirators," we are told, harrassed and molested the aging Plato by constantly putting questions to him, by arguing with him in an insolent manner, by contradicting him on every point, and by attempting to involve him in hair-splitting dialectics. At the time Xenocrates was in Chalcedon, and Speusippus was gravely ill. Hence, neither of them could come to the succor of Plato. In... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cynthia: A Companion to the Text of Propertius by S. J. HeyworthLuigi GalassoS. J. Heyworth. Cynthia: A Companion to the Text of Propertius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, first published in paperback 2009 (with corrections). xiii + 648 pp. Paper. £56.Cynthia represents the hypomnemata to the edition of Propertius by Stephen Heyworth. It is an indispensable tool for readers of the new Oxford Classical Text of Propertius and (...) for this reason the contemporary publication of both books has been extremely important. The text edited by Heyworth is so innovative that it was necessary to explain and discuss the editor’s choices. Cynthia is a long dialogue with the reader: Heyworth exposes reflections that are the fruits of decades of engagement with the text of Propertius, and one feels that he speaks with authority.The Preface is brief, but it summarizes the method followed in the book and places the critic in his appropriate setting, where he acknowledges his debts to scholars like J. L. Butrica and G. P. Goold. The true introduction is the one to the edition in the OCT: in fact it is one work in two volumes. The bulk of the book consists of a discussion of passages from the entire work of the Latin poet. [End Page 169] Before each elegy there is an essential bibliography. Then follows a quotation (in the vulgate form of the text) of the passage under discussion; in most cases it is accompanied by the critical apparatus of the OCT edition, with some modifications. All the passages examined are included because of textual problems, even if sometimes one gets the impression of being confronted with purely literary aspects of the text. There is no introduction to any elegy, and it is not in fact necessary: we grasp only what is problematic, and following Heyworth’s guidance we are taken through a stimulating experience. After 512 pages of Propertiana (D. R. Shackleton Bailey’s model is unquestionable), there is a complete translation of the text proposed by the editor, which is particularly useful. His policy is not to avoid any problem but to discuss it honestly without preconceptions. At the end there are rich indexes, which offer easy access to the wealth of linguistic and stylistic observations that are disseminated over the commentary. They also include the preface to the edition in the OCT.It is impossible to deal in a detailed manner with the hundreds of proposals and hypotheses. The editor offers us a completely different Propertius from the poet we have been accustomed to know from the more important editions of the twentieth century (deemed as conservative until the edition by Goold [Cambridge, Mass. 1990]). Following the wishes of Butrica, the elegies of Propertius are now consistent with the judgments of ancient critics, who valued in Propertius “a poet of finish, grace and charm” (M. Hubbard, Propertius [London 1974]:3). The text has undergone a massive restoration and it is readable and fluent: no more the work of an “expressionistic” poet (E. Pasoli) with his idiosyncratic language, but of a contemporary of Tibullus and an immediate predecessor of Ovid. The severe corruptions of the text are no longer visible in its linguistic texture, but in its fragmentation, which characterizes in particular the second book. In the others there are not so many ruins, but for lacunae and expunged distichs. The decision not only to bracket them, but to put them at the end of each elegy, is rhetorically astute: if one sees these couplets out of their context, one will certainly damn them, since they usually are a proverbial thought or an item of a catalogue.The text of the OCT exhibits a smooth surface that derives from a complex work of restoration. Butrica had told us that most editors of Propertius are like those who had loved the smoke deposited during the centuries onto the frescoes by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel (“Editing Propertius.” CQ 47 [1997]:208). The Propertian frescoes have now been restored: parts which were severely damaged are even better than the original; others, whose authenticity we do not trust, have been detached and put aside. The result is a piece... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 124.2 (2003) 295-301 [Access article in PDF] Some Recent Controversies in the Study of Later Greek Rhetoric George A. Kennedy The Greeks of the Roman Empireproduced no equal to Cicero or Quintilian: among their extensive writings there is no profound philosophical examination of political rhetoric and no comprehensive account of rhetorical education based on a lifetime of teaching. But the numerous later Greek rhetorical treatises, (...) dry reading as they may seem, sometimes even poorly written, have considerable significance for the intellectual history of the early centuries of the Christian era. They are a major source for our understanding of education, its materials, goals, and values, as experienced by most important thinkers of the times, pagan and Christian; the training they describe directly influenced the form and style of composition of much of the writing that has survived; they are evidence for cultural change and for the perception of Greek language and literature of the classical period more than five hundred years later; and they provide linguists and philologists with useful concepts and terminology to describe the workings of texts, pagan and Christian, ancient and modern.From 1931, when Hugo Rabe published the last of his editions of later Greek rhetorical texts, to 1974, when Josef Martin published Antike Rhetorik: Technik und Methode(1974), making extensive use of later Greek rhetorical treatises, study of later Greek rhetoric was at a low point. There was of course continued interest in On the Sublime, traditionally attributed to Longinus and surely the finest Greek work on rhetoric of the imperial period. Other important exceptions include Guilelmo Ballaira's edition of Tiberius' handbook of Demosthenic figures and Dieter Hagedorn's monograph, Zur Ideenlehre des Hermogenes(1964). Since the 1970s, with the expansion of research opportunities and younger scholars' search for opportunities in original work, there has been a modest renaissance that has produced new insight and new controversy. In some ways we now know more about the authors and their works; in some ways we are now uncertain about what we thought we [End Page 295] knew. Here I shall comment on several major contributions to the field and various continuing controversies, limiting the discussion to rhetorical theory from the time of the Roman Empire (thus omitting Demetrius and Philodemus as well as the orators).First, however, readers unfamiliar with this subject may appreciate a brief historical background. The antecedents of the concept of Rhetores Graecican be found in composite manuscripts of the tenth and eleventh centuries, which collect a number of works that the teachers and scribes of the times thought basic for their studies. 1 One of these manuscripts, now known as Parisinus 1741, was the basis for the first printing of Rhetores Graeci, the Aldine edition in two volumes (Venice 1508-9). The principal texts included are, in the following order: Aphthonius' Progymnasmata, the five rhetorical treatises attributed to Hermogenes, Aristotle's Rhetorica, the pseudo-Aristotelian Rhetorica ad Alexandrum, Aristotle's Poetica, Sopatros' Quaestiones de compendis declamationibus, the Ars rhetoricathen attributed to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demetrius' De interpretatione, Alexander's De figuris sensus et dictionis, Menander Rhetor's works on epideictic, two treatises on style attributed to Aelius Aristeides, and Apsines' De arte rhetorica.During the next four hundred years several of these works were given better editions, and additional rhetorical treatises were discovered in other manuscripts. Thus when Christian Walz set out in 1832 to edit Rhetores Graeciin what became an authoritative nine-volume edition, he felt able to omit the three Aristotelian works and the work attributed to Dionysius and to add additional handbooks of progymnasmata (in vol. 1), a few short treatises on rhetoric there and in volumes 3 and 9, and a very large amount of Byzantine scholia and commentary on Hermogenes, constituting all of volumes 2 and 4 through 8.Although Parisinus 1741 has remained a major authority for the text of Aristotle's Rhetoric, by 1854 when Leonard Spengel began publication of his Rhetores Graeciin three volumes, several manuscripts offering better texts of other works had been... (shrink)

Introduction.--Epicurus.--The cynics.--The stoics: Epictetus.--The stoics: Marcus Aurelius.--A philosophic missionary: Dion Chrysostom.--Plutarch.--A popular preacher: Maximus Tyrius.--A theosophist: Apollonius of Tyana.--The sophists: Polemon and Herodes Atticus.--A prince of neurotics: Aelius Aristodes.--Lucian.--Epilogue.

Some of the manuscripts of Aelius Anstides include a short oration in the form of an encomium to an unnamed king. The oration is entitled in three manuscripts and in another. It has been pointed out that in the former group of manuscripts the title is not preceded by the words thus casting doubt on Aristidean authorship.

This article studies a neglected melic poem by Pindar, a hyporcheme for Hieron of Syracuse. It places the work in the context of vigorous poetic production associated with Hieron's foundation of the city of Aitna in 476/5 and assembles the relevant fragments, arguing for the inclusion of frr. 105ab, 106, 114 S-M, and for the relevance of sch. Aelius Aristeides Panathenaikos 187, 2 Dindorf. It analyzes and accepts as likely the evidence of the Pindaric sch. vet. Pythian 2.127 Drachmann (...) that this hyporcheme was referred to by Pindar as a Kastoreion or “Kastor song,” and weighs the significance of the further claim that the poet gifted it to Hieron as a “free extra.” A survey of the hyporcheme as a melic form permits some conclusions as to the likely performative qualities of the work. A close reading of the surviving fragments follows, with an emphasis on how they advanced key motifs of Hieron's propaganda: notably, the image of himself as king and founder, and as a promoter of Dorian culture; and his efforts to assume a kind of Spartan mantle. It is also argues that the poem associates Sicily with the invention of the chariot in an effort to counterbalance the greater hippic successes already achieved by Hieron's brothers Gelon and Polyzalos, as well as the Emmenids. (shrink)

Among the shining examples of the panhellenic spirit of Athens in the spacious days of the Persian Wars, which Attic orators of the fourth century were fond of parading before their degenerate audiences, was an act of the Athenian Ecclesia, by which one Arthmius of Zeleia was declared an outlaw in the territory of Athens and her allies, ‘for that he had brought the gold from Media into Peloponnesus.’ This Psephisma is cited twice over in the speeches of Demosthenes. On (...) the principle that the Devil may quote Scripture, Aeschines cast it back into Demosthenes' teeth. From Aeschines we learn further that Arthmius had visited Athens in the course of his errand, and that he had narrowly escaped execution at the hands of the irate citizens. The proceedings against Arthmius were also recorded by Dinarchus, by Plutarch and by Aelius Aristides. (shrink)

This paper owes its inspiration to a remark made by Professor M. Rostovtzeff; in a note in his Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire on the widespread social unrest of the first two centuries A.D., having cited other literary authorities such as Dio Chrysostom, Aelius Aristides, etc., he writes: ‘The social problem as such, the cleavage between the poor and the rich, occupies a prominent place in the dialogues of Lucian; he was fully aware of the importance (...) of the problem.’ No one, as far as I know, has attempted to collect and discuss the main passages in Lucian on this topic, and the latest writer on this aspect of Lucian reaches a conclusion quite opposed to Rostovtzeff and one which I believe to be wholly misleading. The aim of this paper is to collect and discuss the main references in Lucian to the social problem interpreting them in the light of Lucian's life and background, and the social and economic conditions of his age. In particular I shall stress the importance of the Cynic tradition as it bears on Lucian's attitude, but shall endeavour to show that this tradition is firmly rooted in practical politics and actual participation in social revolutionary movements and goes far beyond the repetition of mere ethical cliches generally ascribed to it. (shrink)

In his exposition of MS Vat. gr. 2226 in 1888, Leopold Cohn brought to light two consecutive grammatical treatises, both attributed to Aelius Herodian: the Περ μαρτημνων λξεων, containing seventy paragraphs, and the Φιλταιρος with 312 glosses. Both had been published in part: fifty-four paragraphs of loc. prav. by G. Hermann in 1801 from MS Mon. gr. 529 and a version of fifty-nine paragraphs by J. Cramer under the title of Περ τν ζητουμνων κατ κλσιν παντς λγου μερν;. Glosses (...) 1–78 of Philet. were published by J. Pierson from a copy of MS Par. gr. 2552. (shrink)