1,721,138 research outputs found
A NEW HERODIANIC TREATISE ON DICHRONA AND A NEW FRAGMENT OF HIPPONAX
No full textThe paper provides the editio princeps (with apparatus criticus and apparatus fontium) of a Greek grammatical treatise dealing with the quantity of anceps vowels or dichrona (α, ι, υ): it is preserved in a codex unicus dating to the 14th century (Par. gr. 2646). While its author- ship is still uncertain, most of the doctrines presented in it seem to go back to the 2nd cen- tury grammarian Herodian. The introduction provides a context for this remarkable text. It also discusses its relationship with the few other known treatises On dichrona, as well as the literary quotations it carries, the most remar- kable being a new fragment (two words) of the archaic lyric poet Hipponax
«Zum Tod des großen Pan», once again. A Forgotten 16th-century Source
No full textThe Brescian Benedictine monk Tito Prospero Martinengo can perhaps be consi- dered as the most talented and learned Italian author of ancient Greek verse after Poliziano. After a brief overview of his relationship with the Roman milieux of the late Cinquecento, this paper examines a passage in the account of the Passion in his Greek Hymn to Christ. The overt reference to the famous account of the death of Pan in Plutarch’s De defectu oraculorum builds a striking parallel between Pan and Christ, one that needs to be understood in the lignée represented by Paolo Marsi, François Rabelais, Guillaume Postel, and Guillaume Bigot. A close reading of the passage against its ancient poetic sources (including Bion of Smyrna, Proclus and the Orphic Hymns) leads to a deeper understanding of Martinengo’s syncretistic attitude and humanistic pietas – not an obvious thing in the capital of Counter- reformed Italy
Ithaca and love: another reading of Cavafy’s poem
No full textCavafy’s Ithaca, probably his best-known poem, has been praised and criticised for its
peculiar literary texture. By highlighting its relationship with Cavafy’s 1894 poem Second
Odyssey, as well as with the ancient and Byzantine tradition of Homeric allegory, this paper
attempts to unravel the meaning of the «high thoughts» and the «elect emotion» advocated
by the author as the key to a wise life. If the new Odysseus’ real ‹enemy› is the irrational
and sentimental thrust of the human soul, the comparison with a passage of the 4th-century orator Themistios might provide an interesting term of comparison for some lines of
Ithaca, and perhaps a new, hidden source of this celebrated lyric
Su nel ciel altro Elicona: Versifying the life of Christ on either side of the Alps
No full textReligious poetic composition in ancient Greek – as opposed to Latin – was rare in Italian humanism, but quite widespread during the Reformation since the 1540s, particularly – though not exclusively – in Germany. While concentrating primarily on narrative poems on the life of Christ, this chapter will deal with some marking episodes of this phenomenon (from Ledesma to Castellio, from Gothus to Reusner and Jamot), with all their aesthetic and ideological purport, especially as regards the so-called ‘Nonnus-Renaissance’ in the Ilfeld School, Martin Crusius’ attempt to a dia- logue with the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the literary and cultural background to Lorenz Rhodoman’s Palaestina. In comparison with this state of affairs, the chapter will examine the case of Tito Prospero Martinengo, the only – if exceptionally skilled – author of religious Greek poetry in Catholic Rome: his Poëmata varia are published under Pope Gregory XIII, at the time of the foundation and early activity of the Collegio Greco di Sant’Atanasio
Textual Variants in Homer: an Overview
No full textThe text of the Iliad and the Odyssey swarms with variant readings attested in ancient and medieval manuscripts as well as in quotations from the archaic through the Byzantine age, and in what remains of the remarkable, if controversial, philological activity carried out by philologists at Alexandria in the 3rd–2nd century BCE. Since the late 18th century, these variants have been taken by many scholars as proof of the inherent fluidity and instability of the Homeric text, hence of its oral genesis and transmission. This paper aims at giving a very brief overview of the evidence and above all of its heavy impact on the widely diverging ways in which “Homer” (as an “author” or as a “text”) has been consid- ered over the last 200 years
Costantino Kavafis. Il mio viaggio in Grecia
No full textGreco della diaspora nato ad Alessandria d’Egitto, Costantino Kavafis parte per il suo primo viaggio in Grecia nel 1901, a trentotto anni. Dalla scoperta della propria patria culturale e spirituale nasce questo diario, che è anche una guida per il lettore di oggi: una guida che conduce tra le vie e i teatri della capitale, sulle «colline viola» intorno al Pireo, attraverso le acque limpide e «intensamente greche» di Delo, fino alle luci del porto di Patrasso
A 1st-Century bce/ce Greek Geographer Discusses What a “Barbarian” Language Is in Terms of Homer and the Carians
No full textThe fifth-century bce historian Thucydides, author of the History of the Pelo- ponnesian War, argued that Homer did not know of a “barbarian” identity as opposed to a unitarian Hellenic identity; however, the first-century geographer Strabo, when providing the most detailed extant treatment of the etymology and function of the word barbaros, explains the line as referring not to the Carian language proper, but—contrary to modern scholarly consensus—to the Carians’ inadequate command of Greek
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