Classical Greek Research Articles

Magical Realism and Romance in Asia: Avenues for Understanding?

The classical Greeks believed that Eros was about erotic love. When we forsake the object of our love, it becomes relegated to the dustbin of memories, which makes it difficult to recover or retrieve. This article discusses how romantic love has been celebrated in works of magical realism in Asia that have evolved to include a range of emotions, political resistance (and questioning state authority and authoritarian personalities), fantasy, delusion, illusion, and fiction. One of the most pronouncedly celebrated works on magical realism was Gabriel Garca Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera (1985), which was about patience, perseverance, and emotional endurance. It is a frequent reminder of the need to preserve the memory of the object of one’s love, as it appears to be the only way to ensure that the dead never die. Three years later, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988) analyzed censorship and religious violence in India (and Pakistan), but incurred the wrath of religious fundamentalists in Iran. Gabriel Garca Márquez’s work was translated from Spanish to English and another 56 languages; it became so influential that many scholars used to believe that magical realism originated from Latin America and from the work of Gabriel Garca Márquez. Others believed that it was from several other Latin American scholars, including George Borges. Before Márquez and Borges, western European scholars said that magical realism originated in Germany between 1919 and 1933, i.e., the Neue Sachlichkeit (or Post-Expressionist) inter-war years, in the work of art critic and historian Franz Roh. Neue Sachlichkeit represented a new but unsettling depiction of a society devastated by war. But this claim is not entirely accurate, as there are other, much earlier claims. Nevertheless, for purposes of this article, magical realism began in Latin America and Mexico, most notably with the work of Gabriel Garca Márquez, who would eventually win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. This article is particularly partial to the influences of Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera (1985), which pedestalizes the memory of being devoted to the object of first love and the fragility of life. In one sense, the confusion, massacres, and plagues of Márquez’s narrative reveal the decadent human desire to plot, plan, and massacre fellow human beings, as we are naturally driven by a God-given desire to destroy the things that we create. Exactly as God does to man, the article asks us to think about the literature of Asian magical realism in general and of Southeast Asian magical realism in particular. What patterns can be gleaned from a brief survey of how magical realism works in Southeast Asia, and what can those patterns tell us about our strengths and desires within streams of consciousness

Plato Goes to China: The Greek Classics and Chinese Nationalism. By Shadi Bartsch

Plato Goes to China: The Greek Classics and Chinese Nationalism. By Shadi Bartsch

BORROWINGS IN THE ENGLISH VETERINARY MEDICINE TERMINOLOGY

The article deals with the problem of language borrowings in the English terminology of veterinary medicine. The aim of the рaper is to analyze borrowings in the terminological system of veterinary medicine of English, to determine the factors that influence the appearance of borrowed terms. The study aims to investigate the etymological and linguistic aspects of terms, tracing their origins and adaptation within the context of veterinary medicine. Borrowed units of the English veterinary medicine terminology consist of the following groups: 1) Greek-Latin borrowings; 2) Scandinavian borrowings; 3) French borrowings; 4) German borrowings. It was mentioned that the Greek and Latin languages are traditionally recognized as basic sources of lexicon replenishment. The article also describes borrowings from other languages. The research examines the influence of classical languages, particularly Latin and Greek, on the formation of veterinary medical terminology. Additionally, it explores the contemporary contributions of the English language, highlighting its role in the global scientific community and scrutinizing the adaptation of new terms in modern veterinary research. Technological advances, brands and marketing strategies also influence the use of borrowings in veterinary terminology. Borrowings in veterinary terminology help to create unity and understanding of international communication in this field. They promote the exchange of knowledge and experience between specialists from different countries and contribute to the further development of veterinary medicine. Employing a comprehensive analytical approach, the author unveils the historical development of veterinary medicine through its linguistic framework, identifying the impact of diverse cultural and scientific contexts. The findings of this study contribute to a nuanced understanding of the evolution of veterinary medical terminology and its significance within the global scientific community.

A Letter from the Editors-in-Chief

A Letter from the Editors-in-Chief

Beowulf as Children's Literature ed. by Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize (review)

Reviewed by: Beowulf as Children's Literature ed. by Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize Anna Smol (bio) Beowulf as Children's Literature, edited by Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize. U of Toronto P, 2021. This volume of ten essays, an interview, and an extensive bibliography is an outstanding resource that lays the groundwork for future research in the field of medieval adaptations for young readers. Situated at the intersection of scholarship on children's literature, Beowulf, medievalism and adaptation studies, this collection covers a long history, from the first Beowulf adaptation for Danish children in 1820 to works by twenty-first-century writers and illustrators, and it suggests various theoretical and critical approaches to the topic of Beowulf adaptations for children. Britt Mize's "Introduction: Beowulf in and near Children's Literature" points out what some may find a surprising fact: that the largest category of Beowulf adaptations (other than direct translations) is those made for children. Bruce Gilchrist's extensive bibliography at the end of the book, listing over 150 adaptations made for young readers from 1820 to 2018, provides evidence of the Old English poem's continued appeal. Mize points out that, aside from a few previous publications on this topic, this volume marks the first time a collection of essays tackles the issues of "transmuting" the Old English poem for child readers and for the adults who provide those readings (5). Mize surveys some key issues that should prompt more scholarly attention: the unique character of every adaptation; its ideological goals, including its educational paratexts; the materiality of the book and its intended audience; and the relation of children's literature to young adult (YA) literature. The following essays each examine one or more of these issues, although Mize does point out, especially in the light of recent developments in early medieval English studies, that "[a] fully theorized, historicizing study of race and racism in Beowulf adaptations for children remains to be written" (7). The first two essays both deal with nationalist ideologies that shape Beowulf for young readers and, in this way, can serve as foundations for future studies of race and racism, as Mize hopes. It is fitting that [End Page 182] these first two essays deal with firsts, as their titles indicate: "'A Little Shared Homer for England and the North': The First Beowulf for Young Readers" by Mark Bradshaw Busbee and "The Adaptational Character of the Earliest Beowulf for English Children: E.L. Hervey's 'The Fight with the Ogre'" by Renée Ward. Busbee examines the work and influence of the Danish scholar N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872), a name that will be familiar to most Beowulf scholars as the man who wrote the first full translation of Beowulf in a modern language (Danish), corrected some of the errors in the Thorkelin transcripts, and explained some of the poem's characters. According to Busbee, Grundtvig is also the man who first identified the poem as suitable for children. His Bjowulfs Drape, published in 1820, claimed to provide for children a "little shared Homer for England and for the North" that would introduce them to their Scandinavian, and specifically Danish, heritage as an alternative to the classical Greek and Latin that had dominated education previously. In this nationalistic goal as well as his belief that the Beowulf-poet wrote in a stage of history analogous to childhood, Grundtvig expresses themes repeated in children's adaptations throughout the nineteenth century and beyond. Busbee examines Grundtvig's translation choices, the development of his considerable influence on Danish education, and the political subtexts of his adaptation. He concludes with some thoughts about Grundtvig's influence, including on J.R.R. Tolkien's notion of a shared Northern heritage. Pointing to another first, Renée Ward presents the work of Eleanora Louisa Hervey (1811–1903), a children's writer who was particularly interested in medievalism. Ward posits that Hervey's story "Roderic's Tale: The Fight with the Ogre," published in 1873 in her volume The Children of the Pear-Garden, may be the first English adaptation of Beowulf that identifies children as its intended readers. Just as Grundtvig was inspired by cultural concerns about national...

Military Leaders and Sacred Space in Classical Greek Warfare. Temples, Sanctuaries and Conflict in Antiquity

Military Leaders and Sacred Space in Classical Greek Warfare. Temples, Sanctuaries and Conflict in Antiquity

The colorization of Greek classic films as intersemiotic translation

Intersemiotic translation constitutes a field of research and application including those of different modes of expression and substance transmis-sion from one text to another. According to Torop (2000) different types of texts such as films, and comics function as signification systems submitted into different translation processes either intra- or extratextual (intralin-guistic or intersemiotic as referred by Jakobson [1959]) to serve a different kind of media communication. It is well known that the textual nature of film is ascertained by specific elements such as sound, episodes, montage including color which as a medium (“color means” as stated by Kress & van Leuween [2002]) plays a very important role in the transfer of meaning ventured by film makers. In this paper I will attempt to designate the role of color as a mode of new signification through the application of colorization in two classic Greek black and white films. I will examine the films “And let the wife fear her husband” («Η δε γυνή να φοβήται τον άνδρα») and “A mess” («Της κακομοίρας») both classified in the classic Greek cinema period (1940–1970) and very popular with the Greek public. Film colorization was a widespread technique in the ‘80s in the United States and lately in Greece, not always well received due to film forgery reasons, as maintained by fans. In this paper I will try to explain how film colorization works as intersemi-otic translation and what is the new meaning acquired for the public by this procedure in the two films examined in the corpus.

First Haykides And The “House Of Torgom” (Some comments on the problem)

In the article is discussed the “Torgomian” hypothesis of the Armenian ethnogenesis in regard to which until now scholars could not arrive at consensus. The study of various sources (written - cuneiform Hittite, Assyrian, Urartian, Hieroglyphic Luwian, classical Greek, linguistic, archaeological, mythological, etc.) points on the historical context in the history of the Armenian Highland which could fit our information drawn by Khorenatsi for the period of the First Haykides. Definitely, that period should be characterized by 1) the absence of considerably big political organization in the Highland, 2) the absence of more or less durative Assyrian control over several political entities in the south, 3) mobility of population.

Criticising Change: From Theognis to Plato

This paper examines how socio-political and cultural change is discussed in selected archaic and classical Greek texts (Thgn. 53-60, 287-92; Pherecr. fr. 155 K.-A.; Aristoph. Nub. 889-1023; Pl. Lg. 700a-701c). The analysis underlines the thematic, rhetorical and stylistic features and the moral preoccupations that are common to these sources. It is then argued that they all participate in an intertextual ‘discourse on change’. Furthermore, the article samples how close textual readings can be enhanced by the awareness that each single passage, as an instance of this tradition of discourse, is intertextually connected to the others.

CONCEPT OF BASIC EDUCATION FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to determine the concept of basic education from the perspective of Islamic philosophy and Greek philosophy. This type of research is library research that uses library data as the object of study in research such as books and articles as data sources. From the analysis that has been done, the results of this study indicate that the concept of basic education from the perspective of Islamic philosophy and Greek philosophy can actually go hand in hand where Greek ideas are used to develop Islamic philosophy. So that the material or its contents have something in common. Therefore, the Arabs are in direct contact with science and philosophy. In the VII to XIII centuries, Muslim intellectuals studied philosophy and science by establishing the Temple of Wisdom as a center for research, library, and translation of Greek texts. From these works, Muslim intellectuals studied and studied the thoughts of classical Greek philosophers. So the works of Greek philosophers are very helpful for Muslim philosophers in studying these works to continue to develop science. This research contributes in adding theoretical insight about the relationship between basic education and greek philosophy perspective.
 
 Keywords: education concept, Islamic philosophy, Greek philosophy

The Premodern History of “Civilisation” in Arabic: Rifāʿa al-Ṭahṭāwī and his Medieval Sources

Abstract From the 1820s onwards, “progress” and “civilisation” gained extensive use in Arabic and evolved as comprehensive concepts. “Progress” conveyed the power of development and “civilisation” referred to the aspired-to future. The key use of “civilisation” was to establish a new form of legitimacy used to justify new institutional practices, values, and customs. Using Rifāʿa al-Ṭahṭāwī’s early theorisation of “civilisation” in the late 1820s as its starting point, this article tracks how medieval Arabic conceptions of the term influenced his theory, while also elaborating on the course and transformation of “civilisation” over time. The article traces the prehistory of the modern concept by mapping the semantics of words such as tamaddun, ʿumrān, taḥaḍḍur, and tamaṣṣur, all of which characterise different aspects of civilisation. It examines the sources al-Ṭahṭāwī drew on in constructing his conception of civilisation and problematises the idea that it is a notion wholly imported from France. The article’s diachronic analysis of “civilisation” uncovers its antecedents as represented in al-Ṭahṭāwī’s works, which intertwine the classical Greek, Hellenist, Arab, and modern European traditions.

Why Markets? The Provisioning of Classical Greek Military Forces on the Move through Friendly, Allied, and Neutral Territory

SummaryClassical Greek armies and navies moving through the territory of friendly, allied, and neutral city-states provisioned themselves through markets organized and controlled by those city-states. No scholar has ever explained why this was so. By placing this practice within a comparative framework, this article demonstrates that the protocol of the provision of markets bypoleisto passing armies developed in the way it did in the late Archaic and early Classical Greek world because Greek states in this period lacked the logistical structures to exert sustained coercive power against other states. Once the protocol was established, however, it continued in use throughout the Classical period even after fifth-century Athenian navies gained the logistical capacity to apply prolonged strategic pressure on coastal and islandpoleis. Use of the protocol continued because traditions of autonomy as well as long-standing customs governing relations between states restrained even the Aegean-dominating Athenians from using more forceful means of acquisition than markets to acquire their food from otherpoleis.

The Great Chasm of Luke 16:26 and Its Interpretations in Byzantine Patristics

Abstract The ‘great chasm’ mentioned in Luke 16:26 is a hapax legomenon in the New Testament. However, the same wording appears in the Theogony of Hesiod and in several later classical Greek writings, which connect the great chasm with the mythology of the underworld or some metaphysical conceptions. Byzantine exegetes of Luke could hardly avoid correlating Luke’s great chasm with its long history in the pagan culture. Thus, several exegetical paths were developed. Origen, with several followers, omit the great chasm at all. Comparing this fact with later anti-Origenian polemic writings, it is plausible that Luke 16:26 was used to argue the rejection of the doctrine of apokatastasis. Other writers, prone to apokatastatic position, such as Didymus the Blind and Gregory of Nyssa, introduced interpretations of the great chasm that unite ethical and metaphysical perspectives. Gregory of Nazianzus and Maximus the Confessor brought allegorical interpretations of the great chasm to the highest level of generalisation. The evolution of understanding the great chasm reveals the shift in the conceptions of a human soul’s destiny and afterlife, its fate and deliverance from it.

Chain of Gold: Greek Rhetoric in the Roman Empire

At a time of renewed interest in Greek rhetoric during the Roman Empire, Chain of Gold establishes itself as an essential text that fills a gap in criticism of this period known as the Second Sophistic. Jarratt observes that the political mode has often been strangely ignored in readings of Second Sophistic texts, especially given their unique postcolonial context, the complex power relations of Greek sophists to their audiences, and the backdrop of potential imperial violence to those who would risk critique. Chain of Gold begins to address this omission, with rigor and creativity, through a sustained inquiry into the politics of rhetorical form.Jarratt’s great insight is that the complicated political role of these sophists required a careful balancing of limited free speaking (parrhēsía) with safer and more effective modes of “figured discourse” as conceptualized by Frederick Ahl (1984) utilizing persuasive strategies that relied on obliqueness, strategic silences, and especially references to classical Greek literature and myth that would have different meanings for their Greek and Roman audiences. Reading these cloaked arguments with attunement to the political, Jarratt finds manifold visions of good government–“projections of possible futures” (21)–as well as coded critiques of empire.Jarratt’s approach results in truly innovative readings of prominent Second Sophistic texts. For example, the chapter analyzing Philostratus’s Imagines, an extensive collection of ekphrases describing over sixty imaginary paintings, eschews the approach most critics have taken, which is to read the descriptions as a demonstration of Philostratus’s own aesthetic theories and commitments. Instead, Jarratt highlights the political dimensions of the Imagines’ colonial, pedagogical framing device–a Greek sophist lecturing a group of upper-class student-age Roman boys about the paintings–and the narrative content of the descriptions themselves.In her reading, Jarratt ambitiously clusters each ekphrasis into various topoi of ethnicity, geography, and gender. She then analyzes how each subject, such as foreign rulers or women, is treated across the entire set of descriptions. This allows her to argue persuasively, for example, that the treatment of women across the Imagines emphasizes sympathy, respect, and admiration. (This is the first scholarly analysis in at least eighty years that considers every one of Philostratus’s descriptions.) Her conclusion–that Philostratus uses ekphrasis in order to enable his Roman audience to imagine the “responsibilities of acting in a power-laden multicultural, imperial context” and to “treat their colonial subjects with care” (100)–breaks new ground for a rhetorical genre usually seen as essentially poetic.Other chapters read figured discourse in more immediately recognizable political contexts, such as Aristides’s Roman Oration. Jarratt shows that, though Aristides ostensibly seems to praise Rome (both city and empire), the text actually offers deep and pervasive “undercurrents of critique” (46) thanks to specific topics Aristides is silent about and Homeric allusions that emphasize absence and hollowness, creating an antisublime aesthetic suggesting the political failures of Rome.Chain of Gold assumes no previous knowledge of the Second Sophistic, and the range of texts in each accessible chapter provides a thorough introduction to the subject, spanning the first four centuries of the common era, a wide range of rhetorical genres, and a set of authors whose relationship to the empire and ability to speak freely varied greatly. The case studies themselves present compelling and exciting models of reading coded political positioning relevant not just to rhetoric scholars and students but to those working in postcolonial studies, comparative literature, and classics. For historians of rhetoric familiar with this literature, Jarratt’s readings are creative and often genuinely surprising, inspiring, one hopes, a new generation of rhetoric scholars to grapple with these complex and until recently underestimated texts.

Some Functions of Rhetorical Questions in Lysias’ Forensic Orations

Abstract The rhetorical question, often assumed to have been favoured by the sophist Gorgias, became a fundamental feature of ancient rhetoric in both Greek and Latin. By the time of Senecan tragedy, an accumulation of as many as seventeen serial rhetorical questions can be found expressing extremes of emotion, especially indignation or despair. Rhetorical questions in some archaic and classical Greek authors have received limited attention, for example, in the Iliad those delivered by Thersites in exciting indignation (2.225–233) and by the authorial voice to create pathos in asking Patroclus about the Trojans he has killed (16.692–693); the string of questions Aphrodite humorously asks in Sappho 1; the ritual queries in the Derveni Papyrus; the series of two to three questions found (often near the beginning of speeches) in the agōns of some tragedies. But the increasing variety and sophistication of the deployment of the rhetorical question in the Greek orators has been surprisingly neglected. This article analyses some of the different uses to which Lysias puts rhetorical questions especially in relation to characterisation in his orations and argues that they represent a considerable advance on the practice of any predecessor in any genre.

Frédéric Patras.The Essence of Numbers

This book approaches the issue of the essence of numbers from a very broad perspective: historical, philosophical, and mathematical. The author is a practicing mathematician who has been working in philosophy since the 1990s, with a particular focus on phenomenology, while maintaining his activity in mathematics. As he explains in the preface to the English translation, the original French version began with a series of lectures introducing philosophy students at Nice to the philosophy of science and of mathematics via the philosophy of arithmetic. The initial aim was to develop in the students an understanding of the issues from the origins in classical Greek thought to the point where they would be ready to follow Husserl’s Philosophy of Arithmetic, which Patras considers ‘one of the deepest texts ever written on mathematical thought’. Each chapter is a manageable chunk of about ten pages, presumably covering what was given as a single lecture. Chapter 1 is an introduction, setting up the plan for the book. While our intuitive conception of numbers appears not to have changed much since classical Greece, the development within mathematics of the theory of numbers is quite extensive. The book aims to help resolve this tension by investigating the ‘essence’ of numbers, starting with classical Greece and following the development of the concept through to the modern era with its rigorous definitions. There is then a very brief overview: starting with the Greeks and the ‘problem of the One’ — is one a number? While civilizations before ancient Greece used numbers and calculation, the Greeks were the first to consider its definition. Number, and the study of the arithmetical properties of the continuum, have been a concern of mathematics throughout its history. Developments at the end of the nineteenth century, and especially Frege’s contributions bringing ‘arithmetic back to the pure laws of thought’, were central to the development of the concept of number, ‘a decisive issue for the whole theory of knowledge’. The algebraic nature of numbers and arithmetic led to the possibility of extending beyond the natural numbers.

A Factory of Magnificence: Themistius, Thucydides, and Constantinople

In Themistius’orations there are many clear and direct references to the Greek literature of the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. However, there are also more subtle references to these classical texts. In this paper, two references to classical Greek historiography are identified in Themistius’Oration 18. As we shall see, in order to praise the refashioning of Constantinople by Theodosius the Great, Themistius subtly quoted a passage by Xenophon. In order to highlight the splendour of the city of Constantinople, he also used as a reference one of the most eminent classical encomia of cities, that is, Pericles’funeral oration from the second book of Thucydides’ History. Both references served to enhance Themistius’already good relations with Theodosius I, who had recently renovated Constantinople with new monuments. This research thus stresses the relevance of quotations in Themistius’orations when studying his political agenda, including quotations that are less obvious and less easily identifiable.

The diverse genetic origins of a Classical period Greek army

Trade and colonization caused an unprecedented increase in Mediterranean human mobility in the first millennium BCE. Often seen as a dividing force, warfare is in fact another catalyst of culture contact. We provide insight into the demographic dynamics of ancient warfare by reporting genome-wide data from fifth-century soldiers who fought for the army of the Greek Sicilian colony of Himera, along with representatives of the civilian population, nearby indigenous settlements, and 96 present-day individuals from Italy and Greece. Unlike the rest of the sample, many soldiers had ancestral origins in northern Europe, the Steppe, and the Caucasus. Integrating genetic, archaeological, isotopic, and historical data, these results illustrate the significant role mercenaries played in ancient Greek armies and highlight how participation in war contributed to continental-scale human mobility in the Classical world.

Interlocked life cycles of counterfactual mood forms from Archaic to Classical Greek

Abstract Based on a corpus study of 2074 occurrences in Archaic (424) and Classical (1650) Greek, I offer a unified explanation for the temporal reference extensions of counterfactual mood forms in declarative, interrogative, wish and de-activated illocutions (i.e. subordinate clauses). I propose a diachronic trajectory (life cycle) for counterfactual mood forms from past to present and future reference. Extensions are constrained diachronically by grammatical aspect (e.g. imperfect facilitating extensions to present reference more than the aorist or pluperfect), and actionality of the state of affairs in clausal context (atelic states of affairs enabling temporal extensions), as well as synchronically by illocutionary usage, collocations with temporal adverbs and common ground knowledge (i.e. temporal location known or not). This trajectory explains the replacements of the inherited counterfactual optative by the counterfactual indicative, because their life cycles are interlocked: in Archaic Greek the counterfactual optative had already extended from its original past to present and future reference and is losing its counterfactuality, whereas the counterfactual indicative referred only to the past and sometimes the present. In Classical Greek, temporal extensions of the counterfactual indicative are continued across different aspects, clause types and illocutions at different rates of change and the counterfactual optative is filtered out of the system.

A Deixis Analysis of Song Lyrics in Jeremy Zucker's “You Were Good to Me” and “Comethru”

This research aims to identify the dominating deixis among the many types of deixis in Jeremy Zucker's songs "You Were Good to Me" and "Comethru." Deixis is derived from the classical Greek phrase "to exhibit, to point out." Deixis is the study of interpreting the relationship of a situation with words, phrases, and elements expressed in a sentence. This study used a qualitative descriptive approach. According to the research, 58 words in the song "You Were Good to Me" feature various types of deixis, and 54 words in the song "Comethru." Person deixis points to objects, all pronouns, and possessives. Spatial deixis is used to indicate a location, whereas Temporal deixis is used to indicate a time.