Search Results
The messenger speeches in some of Seneca's tragedies (the most extensive ones can be read in Agamemnon and Hercules Furens) constitute special epic details of the works. Their narrative technique, intertextual references and representation of time link them not with the dramatic literary form, but with the epic one, and Vergil's Aeneid is, beyond any doubt, their most important 'hypertextus'. The setting of the messenger reports has not been subordinated to the dramatic efficacy of the main conflict, they produce rather a generic multiplicity. The reform of closed literary forms and the generic heterogeneity are not unique phenomena in the literary life of this period; the meaning and importance of the innovation made by Seneca cannot be judged separately from the most important literary achievements of the period: Luc an's Bellum Civile and Petronius' Satyricon
The paper offers a critical edition of Janus' translation, a comparison of this translation with Cicero's translation of the same passage and an analysis of its place among the translations of the period.
To what extent, if at all, can we say that the bishop of Hippo thought that the eternal rules function as truth-criteria for empirical knowledge? In the first part of this paper the author tries to show that the position according to which Augustine's theory of illumination provides a theory of knowledge that accounts even for sense-perception is extreme and based in part on a flawed interpretation of the texts; hence it is impossible to regard Augustine's eternal rules as truth-criteria in the true sense of the term. On the other hand, the aim of the second section is to argue that certain pragmatic traits can indeed be found in Augustine's “epistemology”. He rejects dogmatism on moral grounds and states that it is the duty of the Christian philosopher to extend his researches to the sphere of empirical knowledge. The eternal rules, it can be said, serve as points of reference for a form of probabilism.
In the description of persecutors of Christianity, as given by early Christian hymns, the typical features of ancient tyrants return: they are cruel, brutish, invent always new means of tormenting, finally however they are humiliated.
The author continues his investigations of elements of Hellenistic Greek historiography (especially of the Alexander-history) to be found in Roman poetry and historiography which elements passed unnoticed till now.
This paper challenges the traditional view that Athenian witnesses functioned as supporters of litigant rather than impartial observers of events, and that evidence on such matters as family disputes is irrelevant to the legal issues in an inheritance dispute. Isaios wrote this speech for a client who claims the estate of Astyphilos, his half-brother by the same mother. His opponent, Kleon, a first cousin of Astyphilos on his father’s side, says that his son was adopted in Astyphilos’s will. To win the case, Isaios must prove both that the will is invalid and that his client is entitled to the estate as next of kin. He deploys 13 items of witness testimony, more than in any of his other surviving speeches. Witnesses testify not only that the will is a forgery, but also that Astyphilos never spoke to Kleon after a quarrel between their fathers, whereas Astyphilos and the speaker enjoyed a close fraternal relationship. On the traditional view, Isaios is asserting a moral claim to the estate, knowing that his legal case is weak. I argue that evidence of relationships within the family is relevant to the validity of the will, as part of the argument from probability that Astyphilos was unlikely to have adopted his enemy’s son. Some important aspects of the speaker’s story are, nevertheless, unsupported by testimony, and I conclude that Isaios was probably trying to disguise his client’s vulnerability on the issue of kinship by making the most of his evidence against the will.
A re-examination of the question why, in the revival of interest, in the first century BC in Aristotle’s esoteric works, as opposed to his doctrines, the work Categories played so large a part. The answers suggested are that the work aroused interest just because it did not easily fit into the standard Hellenistic divisions of philosophy and their usual agendas, and that, more than Aristotle’s other works with the possible exception of the Metaphysics , it revealed aspects of Aristotle’s thought that had become unfamiliar during the Hellenistic period.
something not completely useless, as I hope, about the material at our disposal. As a matter of fact, the first question we meet when taking into account the Vindolanda Tablets, from the point of view of Vulgar and Late Latin, is whether we find some kinds
storico dell’Archivio vaticano. Annali della Facoltà di lettere e filosofia della Università di Napoli 2 (1964–68) 109–165, bes. 112 mit Anm. 13; Sedlar (Anm. 14) 247; N ecipoğlu, N.: Byzantium between the Ottomans and the Latins. Politics and
. J. The Rise and Fall of Latin Humanism in Early-Modern Russia . Pagan Authors, Ukrainians, and the Resiliency of Muscovy. Leiden–New York–Köln, 1995 . W AQUET
