Attic Prose Research Articles

Review: Orality and Performance in Classical Attic Prose: A Linguistic Approach, by Alessandro Vatri

Review: <i>Orality and Performance in Classical Attic Prose: A Linguistic Approach</i>, by Alessandro Vatri

Orality and Performance in Classical Attic Prose: A Linguistic Approach by AlessandroVatri

Reviewed by: Orality and Performance in Classical Attic Prose: A Linguistic Approach by AlessandroVatri Vasiliki Zali-Schiel AlessandroVatri, Orality and Performance in Classical Attic Prose: A Linguistic Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. 344 pp. ISBN: 978019879590 Vatri has produced a well-researched book that helpfully and skilfully marries the cultural-historical and the linguistic character of his work. The excellent use and review of scholarship enables Vatri to achieve the purpose of the book, which is to examine, with the help of modem psycholinguistics, whether there is any linguistic difference between classical Attic prose texts intended for public oral delivery and those intended for written circulation and private performance. The book starts with a thorough discussion of the complicated relationship between oral and written style (Chapter 1). The medium alone is not a decisive divisive factor because there is a great variety of communicative situations and priorities one needs to take into consideration even when the same medium is used. And this is indeed the case with Attic prose, where we cannot clearly distinguish between “literally” oral and written texts. However, the distinction between a written and a non-written conception can be traced very early in the development of ancient Greek stylistic theory (e.g., Alcidamas, Isocrates, Aristotle). For example, Isocrates in his Philip clearly marks the difference between speeches meant to be read and those meant to be delivered: those meant to be read may not be timely, hence their persuasive ability is compromised. Speeches for reading may also not manage to persuade the listeners because they may not be successfully delivered by the reader. This affects the reception of a text and changes the emphasis of the distinction between writtenness and non-writtenness from composition to performance. [End Page 96] Chapter 2 turns to contexts of reception. In classical Athens, close scrutiny of prose texts was possible in solitary and private group reading (“off-line” perusal) but not in situations whose norms of interaction excluded this possibility, such as public oratorical performances and semi-formal small- scale epideixeis. In such public competitive contexts, there was no room for anything but clarity (saphēneia) to convince an audience unable to revisit the text (“on-line” reception). Public texts could therefore not afford obscurity of expression by contrast to private texts (“where off-line perusal is possible, there is no need to take excessive pains to ensure the optimal on-line comprehension of a text,” 35). Hence, the different contexts of reception may be associated with linguistic difference. In Chapter 3, Vatri looks at the distinction between texts that were meant for off-line perusal/reception (scriptures) and those meant for on-line reception (scripts). The writing of Attic prose texts was quite a complex process, with several oral stages—and plausibly even oral composition— preceding written dissemination. But there were also revisions of publicly delivered texts (scripts), such as deliberative and forensic speeches, after their performance and often for the purpose of making a new version of the text public through written dissemination. After examining literacy and reading in classical Athens, Vatri determines the conception of written prose texts as scripts or scriptures proceeding on a genre-by-genre basis. Chapter 4 focuses on clarity (saphēneia), which was extremely important for texts meant for on-line reception (scripts) and especially so for public speeches in particular. The centrality of clarity of expression is already highlighted in ancient Greek rhetorical literature. For “Demetrius” (for example), clarity and familiarity are key to persuasiveness; persuasiveness and clarity can be achieved through plain style—an idea that can be traced back to the criticism of Aeschylus’ obscure language in Aristophanes’ Frogs. According to “Demetrius,” plain style is distinguished not only by its clarity but also by a vividness generated by precision (aknbeia). Both Aristotle and Isocrates consider precision an important feature of texts meant for reading, which may also generate saphēneia. Vatri then looks closely at a range of examples from ancient Greek rhetorical literature to examine what they say about the rhetorical devices employed to produce saphēneia. A recurrent issue in ancient discussions is ambiguity, which can be generated by vocabulary (e.g., ambiguous character of certain...

The Nature and Perception of Attic Prose Rhythm

This article investigates the ancient theoretical discussions and critical analyses of rhythm in Attic prose in order to reconstruct its native perception as a psychoacoustic and cognitive phenomenon. In particular, the article examines the inventories of rhythmic feet identified by the ancient Greek rhetoricians and concludes that the earliest reconstructible one is most likely to include the minimal durational patterns perceivable as rhythmical units by ancient native speakers. Much in the perception of such rhythms depended on vocalization and delivery, and purely metrical approaches to prose rhythm in Attic prose are inadequate to capturing this phenomenon to the full.

ProcopiusDe aedificiis4.2.1–22 on the Thermopylae Frontier

AbstractThis article compares topographical and archaeological remains of the Thermopylae frontier with the ancient testimonia of the sixth century historian Procopius of Caesareia (De aedificiis4.2.1.–22). It was revealed that: many of the frontier fortifications described were initially built before the sixth century; the fortified κλεισούρα mentioned should be equated with the Dhéma Pass; and the commercial settlement of Myropóles is best identified with the modern village of Káto Dhió Vouná. Written in Attic prose, this passage represents a rhetorical exercise, the climax of which turned not on the ancient battlefield of Thermopylae, but rather on a mountain pass and it's highway that neutralized the Thermopylae defenses if they were ever controlled by the enemy. We were told that only the Emperor Justinian's wisdom could grasp this critical fact. Additionally, Procopius employed many rhetorical devices in this narrative: τóπος, χρóνος,, ἄγαλμα, ἔκφρασις, πανηγρικóς and employed imperial propaganda, praise, and exaggeration as well. In short, the passage is a classic example of selective story telling that may have found its inspiration in the Hunnic raid of 539/540 and the Herodotean account of the Persian invasion of 480 BC. While Procopius' account remains our best topographical description of the late antique Thermopylae frontier, one can only say that more archaeological questions were left unanswered than were resolved. In short, as an archaeological source, theDe aedificiisis a disappointing and vexing resource filled with equivocations. Finally, one may doubt that Procopius ever did visit the Thermopylae frontier, even though during his career he certainly had ample opportunity to do so. His account, therefore, must have been based upon secondary sources, whether imperial archival material, itineraries, or military staff reports and were not the result of personal autopsy.

THE SUPPOSED CAUSAL ΕΙ IN HOMER

According to Chantraine, suivi de l'indicatif, est souvent proche pour le sens de ?pe? causal.1) In a discussion of the use of in conjunction with the particle ?e, K?hner tells us, e? ?e wird von den Attikern mit einer gewissen Urbanit?t auch von unzweifelhaften Aussagen gebraucht, wo auch epe?d?, qnoniam, stehen k?nnte.2) That he restricts his comments to Attic prose may be an indication that he did not recognize the construction in Homer. However, there are plenty of parallels in Homer that seem ostensibly to match those he cites from later Greek prose. Ebeling gives an exhaustive list of the uses of e?, and one of the rubrics reads, Est interdum de re certa vertique quodam modo potest 'cum'. The words quodam modo seem rather vague; it is the purpose of this article to look at these examples afresh and to assess how far and ?pe?/ epe?d? are in fact interchangeable. I have examined every use of cited by Ebeling which might conceivably have a bearing on the question. In the process of so doing, it emerged that there were several relevant examples that had escaped his attention. In what follows, numerous passages are reproduced in detail since it is only by close attention to context that we can appreciate the force of e?. It will emerge that there are several examples where really must be translated by if and not since. In other cases, however, the matter appears at first sight to be less clear cut. In English, one can think of instances where if and mice seem to be quite close to each other in meaning. Let us take, for example, the sentence:

Antifonte V 51, [And.] IV 7, PS-X. ATH I 5

This paper is related to the most ancient Attic prose writers, Le., Antiphon, Andocides, and the so-called Old Oligarch. The author intends to propose three new conjectures which are always supported by the present manuscript tradition of each text. Syntactic and rhetorical questions have also been taken into account.

The Poetry of Justice: Hesiod and the Origins of Greek Law

A growing area of contemporary legal scholarship is the field loosely described by the expression ‘law and literature’. One of the many points of intersection between law and literature is the study of legal writing, including the opinions of judges and jurists, as a form of literature. Scholars began to study the works of the Attic orators as literature as early as the first century BC, but their specific concern was with these texts as examples of Attic prose and their literary interest primarily concerned matters of rhetoric and prose style. Similarly, modern scholars who have continued this study of the orators have generally examined legal orations not as a separate genre but as another example of prose literature in the same category with history or epideictic oratory. But forensic oratory can also be studied as a form of literature sui generis, whose worth is determined by the special requirements of this genre. As background for such a study I propose to examine the earliest examples of legal oratory, as seen in the works of Homer and Hesiod.

M. H. B. Marshall: Verbs, Nouns, and Postpositives in Attic Prose. (Scottish Classical Studies, 3.) Pp. vii + 178. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1987. £12.50.

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Stuart Absolutism and the 'Utility' of Tacitus

Criticks say he had a concise and sententious way of Writing, but as to the use and of his History they vary, or it may be rather against each other.1 When he wrote that sentence about Tacitus, Degory Wheare newly appointed as the first incumbent of the Camden Readership in History at Oxford was trying to incapsulate, for the benefit of his students, the critical consensus on each of the historians in the curriculum. The result would be a sort of Jacobean Reader's Guide to the great historians which would serve generations of young Englishmen: De ratione et methodo legendi historias (1623). But in the case of Tacitus consensus gave way to polarization, and Wheare was forced to alter his scheme accordingly by presenting the conflicting viewpoints. His observation that Renaissance critics fight against each other over the utility that is, the contemporary relevance and applicability of a long dead historian, suggests what a curious phenomenon Tacitus' reputation had become. About Tacitus' controversial style his new, concise and sententious way of Writing and its influence on the development of Attic prose Morris W. Croll and others have taught us much.2 The controversy with which I shall be concerned here is the one over his utility: the debate about whether, why, how, and by whom his works (especially the Annals) ought to be read. At the risk of oversimplifying the issues in the interest of clarity, we might designate the polarities of opinion as the Tacitean revival and the anti-Tacitean reaction. Because the former especially with reference to its continental background is well documented elsewhere,3 I shall address myself primarily to the latter in these pages. Specifically, my topic is the way the anti-Tacitean reaction became enmeshed in the political dialectics of Stuart England. First, however, some account of the revival in its English manifestation, with a glance at its European origin, is in order. The widely ranging controversy over the value and of the Annals brought into opposition two members of the intellectual triumvirate of the late Renaissance: the Belgian humanist Justus Lipsius and the Huguenot theologian and classicist Isaac Casaubon.' The Tacitean revival, as a European phenomenon, began with Lipsius' great 1575 edition of Tacitus; thereafter, the editor was an indefatigable propagandist in behalf of his author. Tacitean apologists, in England as elsewhere, invariably derived

Sobre el orden de palabras en griego: el genitivo adnominal

The aim of this paper is to show that the relative order of Genetive and governing noun is determined, at least in Attic literary prose of ca . 400 B. C., by a syntactic rule, according to which, Ablative or Partitive Genetive follows the main noun, and Possessive Genetive goes before the modified noun. A selection from Lysias, Thucydides, Antiphon, Andocides, and Pseudo-Xenophon’s Resp. Ath . has been taken into account for the purpose. The syntactic determination of Greek word order being at any case taken for granted, a set of lexical rules is previously established in order to give a sounder account of the evidence; in the author's view, the disproving instances are due either to emphatic reasons or to the overlapping of two rules. A second class of lexical rules can be inferred from the position of the article. May the proposed syntactic rule be right, Classical Greek is a VO language as well an OV one.

Herodotus and Aristophanes on Monarchy

It is a commonplace in the criticism of Attic drama to dwell on its severe, starkly unsympathetic treatment of monarchia, the rule of a single man. The often violent dislike of tyrannical government illustrated in the extant plays has been largely responsible for the widespread assumption among scholars that the attitude of fifth-century Athenians to monarchic rule was one of unrelieved hostility. Certainly it can hardly be doubted that the subsequent portrayal of the tyrant in Attic prose literature as a monster of depravity owes much to the art of Aeschylus and his successors, or, again, that this marked antipathy to sole rule reflects to a considerable extent the feelings of the dramatists' contemporaries.

Attic Kinship Terminology

Some years ago M. Miller began an article in this Journal with the statement, ‘Classical Greek kinship terminology, as it is used for example by Isaios, offers few difficulties of meaning in its terms.’ She then constructed a chart to show the ‘principal usages’. A review of the evidence indicates that this chart was probably based on Pollux’ discussion of kinship terms; at any rate it simply does not reflect the actual usage of Attic prose writers (the ten orators, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato). For example the chart shows that the terms for uncle are μήτρως (maternal uncle) and πάτρως (paternal uncle). Neither of these terms is used in Attic prose at all, and there is only one occurrence in Attic poetry: μήτρωσιν (dative plural) in Euripides, referring to a maternal grandfather (plural for the singular) or maternal ancestors in general. The Attic term for uncle (either paternal or maternal) is simply θϵῖος. By way of comparison we may note that Herodotus always uses μήτρως and πάτρως, never θϵῖος. Again in the case of terms for one's male affines Miss Miller lists words which do not occur in Attic prose, πϵνθϵρός, πϵνθϵριδοῦς, and δαήρ, as well as γαμβρός, which occurs but once.

Some Observations on Final Clauses in Hellenistic Attic Prose Inscriptions

I Begin with quotations from two authoritative works, both of which require modification in the light of the evidence which I have assembled concerning the language of the inscriptions of Attica of the period 323–146 B.C. These quotations are: (a) LSJ s.v. B: ‘in early Attic inscriptions only is used …; without only once in cent, iv B.C., IG 22. 226. 42 (343 B.C.), after which it becomes gradually prevalent.’ This is very near the truth. (b) Goodwin, Moods and Tenses, § 328: ‘ final with the subjunctive appears first in Aeschylus, and remains in good use in Attic poetry and prose, being almost the only final expression found in the formal language of the Attic inscriptions.’ This, although absolutely correct in relation to the fifth and fourth centuries, is too sweeping for the period 299–146 B.C., and definitely misleading for the period after 146 B.C.

Matthew Arnold and Attic Prose Style

Matthew Arnold's prose style has been praised in the past by innumerable critics and by writers of today as different as T. S. Eliot and Somerset Maugham. His ideas about prose style still live; and, as the infatuation with eccentricity in art dies and the concern for sanity grows stronger, it may become more apparent that many of Arnold's comments on the art of prose lead to principles that have endured because they are sound. This paper is an analysis of Arnold's comments on the meaning and relationships of prose style and his formulation of the qualities of an “Attic” prose to express a sane national intelligence. Part one of this study examines the significance, part two the qualities that Arnold gave to prose style.

TϒΓxanΩ for TϒΓxanΩ Ωn in Attic Prose

The question whether τυγχ⋯νω can be used forτυγχ⋯νω ὥν in Attic Prose has been differently answered by different scholars. Phrynichus (p. 277 Lob., p. 342 Ruth.) held that it could not, and Porson (ad Eur. Hec. 788 [782]) followed him. The generality of modern scholars, however, have taken the other view—so, e.g., Locella, Heindorf, Lobeck, Ast, Schneider, Madvig, Stallbaum, Krüger, W. H. Thompson, Rutherford, Jebb, Adam, Kühner-Gerth. The object of the present note is to show that the ‘modern’ view, if it is to be maintained, must be based on other evidence than that hitherto given for it.

Thucydides and Sphacteria

Professor V. Wilamowitz-Moellendorf has recently published a paper in which he argues, firstly, that the very remarkable topographical errors in Thucydides' account of the Pylos and Sphacteria campaign, shown so clearly in Grundy's and Burrows' articles in the Hellenic Journal, can only be accounted for on the supposition that he had none but Athenian sources of information, and secondly, that as later— after 421—; he had access to Peloponnesian sources, his account of this campaign was written before 421; we have, therefore, an early example of Attic prose comparable with the oligarchic Constitution of Athens. Now seeing that the incident of the campaign which interested the contemporary Greeks most was the surrender of the Spartans, and that Thucydides goes out of his way, more Herodoteo rather, to give an anecdote (with explanation) to illustrate this interest, it would be sufficiently remarkable if he had not been to the trouble of getting the Spartan version of the affair; the more especially as Spartan sources were easily available in the prisoners themselves, who seem to have received at Athens the common treatment of that time, compounded of cruelty and freedom, which is so foreign to our own method, and to whom Thucydides could have had ready access. It is therefore worth while seeing if there is any reason for supposing Wilamowitz' view to be true.

Book Review: Flagg's a Writer of Attic Prose

Book Review: Flagg's a Writer of Attic Prose

Hogue's Irregular Verbs of Attic Prose - The Irregular Verbs of Attic Prose, their forms, prominent meanings, and important compounds; together with lists of related words and English derivatives. By Addison Hogue, Professor of Greek in the University of Mississippi. Ginn and Co., 1889. 6s.

Hogue's Irregular Verbs of Attic Prose - The Irregular Verbs of Attic Prose, their forms, prominent meanings, and important compounds; together with lists of related words and English derivatives. By Addison Hogue, Professor of Greek in the University of Mississippi. Ginn and Co., 1889. 6s. - Volume 4 Issue 4

On some Ionic Elements in Attic Tragedy

In the former part of this paper I started from the fact that the use in Attic prose of forms in -οσυνος, -οσυνη, is limited by certain rules as to meaning and etymology, which do not apply to Ionic literature; and I observed that the usage of the Attic tragedians followed in these respects the practice of the Ionians. This being so, I advanced the hypothesis that the tragedians and their audiences must have been aware of the peculiar character of these words, and that upon investigation the passages of tragedy in which they occurred would be found to have in other ways also an Ionic colour or a special connection with Ionic language and tradition, which colour or connection the reader must perceive if he would fully appreciate the tone, and in some cases the meaning, of the author. So far as the limit of my space extended this anticipation was, I think, fulfilled. I showed that in some cases certainly (p. 272), in others almost certainly (p. 279 foll.), these words were actually inflected according to the Ionic rule.