Classical World Research Articles

The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World. By Cyprian Broodbank. London: Thames & Hudson, 2013, and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 672. £34.95; $49.95 (cloth).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World. By Cyprian Broodbank. London: Thames & Hudson, 2013, and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 672. £34.95; $49.95 (cloth).Thomas F. TartaronThomas F. TartaronUniversity of Pennsylvania Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Near Eastern Studies Volume 74, Number 2October 2015 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/682249 Views: 156Total views on this site © 2015 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse a book review in this section, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Chaucer and fame: reputation and reception

Book synopsis: Fama, or fame, is a central concern of late medieval literature: where fame came from, who deserved it, whether it was desirable and how it was acquired and kept. An interest in fame was not new but was renewed and rethought within the vernacular revolutions of the later Middle Ages. The work of Geoffrey Chaucer collates received ideas on the subject of fama, both from the classical world and from the work of his contemporaries. Chaucer's place in these intertextual negotiations was readily recognized in his aftermath, as later writers adopted and reworked postures which Chaucer had struck, in their own bids for literary authority. This volume tracks debates on fama which were past, present and future to Chaucer, using his work as a centre point to investigate canon formation in European literature from the late Middle Ages and into the Early Modern period.

Quantum Uniqueness

In the classical world one can construct two identical systems which have identical behavior and give identical measurement results. We show this to be impossible in the quantum domain. We prove that after the same quantum measurement two different quantum systems cannot yield always identical results, provided the possible measurement results belong to a non orthogonal set. This is interpreted as quantum uniqueness - a quantum feature which has no classical analog. Its tight relation with objective randomness of quantum measurements is discussed.

Classical Traditions in Science Fiction ed. by Brett M. Rogers and Benjamin Eldon Stevens (review)

Reviewed by: Classical Traditions in Science Fiction ed. by Brett M. Rogers and Benjamin Eldon Stevens Sarah Annes Brown Brett M. Rogers and Benjamin Eldon Stevens (eds.). Classical Traditions in Science Fiction. Classical Presences. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xiii, 380. $35.00 (pb.). ISBN 978–0-19–022833–0. The fourteen essays which this volume comprises explore different intersections between two fields that might at first seem worlds apart. However, there is a long tradition of harking back to the classical past when speculating about humanity’s possible future. Explorations both backwards and forwards in time are, in their different ways, speculative journeys to an “undiscovered country” (7): “The strangeness of images of the ancient past is marked by the ‘cognitive estrangement’ of futures imagined in modern SF” (18). Frankenstein, subtitled “The Modern Prometheus,” is a locus classicus of this synergy between the classics and SF. An equally apt illustration is Mary Shelley’s less well known novel, The Last Man: the frame narrative, set in Shelley’s present, documents the chance discovery of a cache of Sibylline documents from the distant past which reveal mankind’s future extinction in the twenty-first century. The volume opens with four essays on “SF’s Rosy-Fingered Dawn” before addressing more recent examples of classical presences in television, film, and literary science fiction. Whereas some contributors focus on SF texts whose debt to classical culture is unmissable, others track looser ties between these two traditions, and demonstrate how each may become an illuminating lens through which to view the other. Rebecca Raphael and Brett M. Rogers offer thought-provoking discussions of shifts in the way hybridity and post-human identity have been conceptualized. George Kovacs proposes an irresistible parallel between myth-making in the classical world and Star Trek’s later myth-building. In both cases the “mythology” [End Page 131] first develops organically, before being refined in a more self-conscious age; Hellenistic sophisticates and avid Star Trek fans alike are fully aware of the divergences, contradictions, and subtexts within their traditions (203). Sometimes, where a more direct link is claimed between a SF text and a classical source, the argument seems more tenuous. Although he has interesting things to say about both works, some of the connections Joel P. Christensen identifies between Dune and the Iliad are a little generic. Erik Grayson draws suggestive parallels between the fall of Rome and the post-apocalyptic America of Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz but seems to be clutching at straws in some of his attempts to tease significance out of Miller’s classicizing names. Jesse Weiner’s evidence for identifying Lucretius as a key intertext for Frankenstein is strained in places. He makes a better case, however, for the presence of Lucan’s necromantic witch Erichtho in the novel, a parallel that amplifies the monstrosity of Frankenstein himself. Although it rests on just three quotations from the Aeneid, Benjamin Eldon Stevens’ essay on Journey to the Center of the Earth presents a meticulously argued case for seeing Verne’s narrator, Axel, as a “rewritten epic hero” (91) whose own katabasis offers not a prophetic glimpse of his people’s future (as granted to Aeneas), but a scientific revelation of humanity’s past through the living fossils who dwell in the underworld. The monstrous proto-human who shepherds mastodons is a figurative father figure who replaces the ghostly presence of Anchises. There are many other highlights in this consistently stimulating collection. Tony Keen makes a thoroughly convincing case for Lucian as a significant influence on H. G. Wells’s The First Men in the Moon. Marian Makins demonstrates how Panem, the dystopian society of The Hunger Games, synthesizes elements from both the historical Rome and “misrepresentations” of Rome in American popular culture in order to create “a carefully constructed hybrid reconfiguration that implicates aspects of contemporary society” (304). Gaël Grobéty offers a crisply argued analysis of how Dan Simmons, in Ilium and Olympos, both restages Homeric epiphanies and demystifies them, replacing awe at divine intervention with wonder at human ingenuity. Inevitably, any reader who already has an interest in both classical traditions and science fiction will...

Breadth, Synthesis, and Talking Beyond Our Specializations: A New Department of Classical World

Breadth, Synthesis, and Talking Beyond Our Specializations: A New Department of Classical World

Gendervooroordelen en de Romeinse census

Abstract Gender biases and the census of the Roman citizensThe Roman census figures are a fundamental source of demographic information for the classical world. Since the nineteenth century historical demographers have used these figures to calculate the number of Roman citizens. The resulting population figures, however, vary considerably between different interpretations. This article aims to show that the numerical differences can be associated with different views on Roman citizenship. A gender bias played a role, in particular a one-sided emphasis on male citizenship which has kept attention away from women as independent citizens in the census figures. This bias, which is already visible in Roman sources, was strengthened in the nineteenth century. Roman citizenship terminology was used to describe the contemporary liberal citizenship ideal with its emphasis on the male citizen-soldier as the head of his family. This liberal citizenship ideal in return influenced nineteenth-century interpretations of Roman citizenship which are still central to our understanding of the Roman census figures today.

Quantum theory of an electromagnetic observer: Classically behaving macroscopic systems and the emergence of the classical world in quantum electrodynamics

Quantum electrodynamics under conditions of distinguishability of interacting matter entities, and of controlled actions and back-actions between them, is considered. Such "mesoscopic quantum electrodynamics" is shown to share its dynamical structure with the classical stochastic electrodynamics. In formal terms, we demonstrate that all general relations of the mesoscopic quantum electrodynamics may be recast in a form lacking Planck's constant. Mesoscopic quantum electrodynamics is therefore subject to "doing quantum electrodynamics while thinking classically," allowing one to substitute essentally classical considerations for quantum ones without any loss in generality. Implications of these results for the quantum measurement theory are discussed.

A self-interfering clock as a "which path" witness.

In Einstein's general theory of relativity, time depends locally on gravity; in standard quantum theory, time is global-all clocks "tick" uniformly. We demonstrate a new tool for investigating time in the overlap of these two theories: a self-interfering clock, comprising two atomic spin states. We prepare the clock in a spatial superposition of quantum wave packets, which evolve coherently along two paths into a stable interference pattern. If we make the clock wave packets "tick" at different rates, to simulate a gravitational time lag, the clock time along each path yields "which path" information, degrading the pattern's visibility. In contrast, in standard interferometry, time cannot yield "which path" information. This proof-of-principle experiment may have implications for the study of time and general relativity and their impact on fundamental effects such as decoherence and the emergence of a classical world.

Least significant qubit (LSQb) information hiding algorithm for quantum image

Quantum computation has the ability to solve some problems that are considered inefficient in classical computer. Research on Quantum image processing has been extensively exploited in recent decades. Quantum image information hiding can be divided into quantum image digital watermarking, quantum image steganography, anonymity and other branches. Least significant bit (LSB) information hiding plays an important role in classical world because many information hiding algorithms are designed based on it. In this paper, based on novel enhanced quantum representation (NEQR), the concrete least significant qubit (LSQb) information hiding algorithm for quantum image is given firstly. Because information hiding located on the frequency domain of an image can increase the security, we further discuss the frequency domain LSQb information hiding algorithm for quantum image based on quantum Fourier transform. In our algorithms, the corresponding unitary transformations are designed to realize the aim of embedding the secret information to the least significant qubit representing color of the quantum cover image. Finally, we illustrate the procedure of extracting the secret information. Quantum image LSQb information hiding algorithm can be applied in many fields according to different needs.

Necessary and sufficient conditions for macroscopic realism from quantum mechanics

Macroscopic realism, the classical world view that macroscopic objects exist independently of and are not influenced by measurements, is usually tested using Leggett-Garg inequalities. Recently, another necessary condition called no-signaling in time (NSIT) has been proposed as a witness for non-classical behavior. In this paper, we show that a combination of NSIT conditions is not only necessary but also sufficient for a macrorealistic description of a physical system. Any violation of macroscopic realism must therefore be witnessed by a suitable NSIT condition. Subsequently, we derive an operational formulation for NSIT in terms of positive operator-valued measurements and the system Hamiltonian. We argue that this leads to a suitable definition of "classical" measurements and Hamiltonians, and apply our formalism to some generic coarse-grained quantum measurements.

The Center and the Periphery in Classical Chinese World: The Part of Josŏn Poems in Poetical Works of Dynasties(列朝詩集) and Anthology of Ming’s Poetry(明詩綜)

The Center and the Periphery in Classical Chinese World: The Part of Josŏn Poems in Poetical Works of Dynasties(列朝詩集) and Anthology of Ming’s Poetry(明詩綜)

Proposing new experiments to test the quantum-to-classical transition

An open problem in modern physics is why microscopic quantum objects can be at two places at once (i.e. a superposed quantum state) while macroscpoic classical object never show such a behaviour. Collapse models provides a quantitative answer for this problem and explain how macroscopic classical world emerges out of microscopic quantum world. A universal noise field is postulated in collapse models, inducing appropriate Brownian- motion corrections to standard quantum dynamics. The strength of collapse-driven Brownian fluctuations depend on: (i) the parameters characterizing the system (e.g., mass, size, density), and (ii) two phenomenological parameters defining the statistical properties of the collapse noise. The collapse-driven Brownian motion works such that microscopic systems behave quantum mechanically, while macroscopic objects are classical. At the intermediate mesocopic scale, collapse models predict deviations from standard quantum predictions. This issue has been subject of experimental tests. All experiments to date have been at the scales where collapse effects are negligible for all practical purposes. However, recent experimental progress in revealing quantum features of larger objects, increases the hope for testing at unprecedented scales where collapse models can be falsified. Current experiments are mainly focused on the preparation of macroscopic systems in a spatial quantum superposition state. The collapse effects would then manifest as loss of visibility in the observed inference pattern. However, one needs a quantum interference with single particles of mass ∼ 1010amu for a decisive test of collapse models. Creating such massive superpositionsis quite challenging, and beyond currectstate-of-the-art. Quite recently, an alternative approach has been proposed where the collapse manifests in the fluctuating properties of light interacting with the quantum system. The great advantage of this new approach is that here there is no need for the preparation of a quantum superposed state. It has been discussed that promising results can be revealed in the spectrum of light interacting with a radiation pressure-driven mechanical oscillator in a cavity optomechanics setting. Here, we review the theoretical modelling of the above optomechenical proposal. We discuss how collapse-driven Brownian motion modifies the spectrum. We quantify the collapse effect and explain how it depends on the parameters of the mechanical oscillator (e.g., mass, density, geometry).

Amid the Ruins of Time: The Classics as Modernist Project in Gadamer and Seferis

Both the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer and the Greek poet Giorgos Seferis attempted to solve the problem of classical reception by connecting the modern reader with the poetry of ancient Greece. Read according to Gadamer, Seferis's poetry of the 1930s articulates and enacts the classical world's final gasp, as its supposedly timeless significance and power is used one last time in order to inaugurate its relegation to the category of the insignificant, the arbitrary, the personal, and merely local. This abdication of the Classics' claim to universality under the aegis of their own authority could only be managed without paradox by a Greek poet, in whose work the transition from Classical to “merely Greek” could occur seamlessly and without contradiction. In turn, the poetry of Seferis reveals that Gadamer's hermeneutic enterprise is in essence a late attempt to justify the modernist project in the postmodern period.

The Great War and the Classical World: GSA Presidential Address, Kansas City, 2014

The world that went to war in August 1914 was a very ancient one. Those who special- ize in the social and military history of the war may be less surprised by this opening remark than the nonspecialists among us who are accustomed to emphasizing the war's novelties and the deep cultural schism represented by the mere date 1914. I myself embarked on the writing of this lecture with an antiquated view of the cultural history of the war and its aftermath shaped predominately by the work of the great Paul Fussell, who led me, and I think others, to believe that the war sounded the death knell for all diction, and its close corollary, high culture, in which antiquity played so great a role. 1 But my inquiries, and a veritable avalanche of new scholarship, has suggested that there was, in fact, a great deal of cultural continuity across the war's divide; and, as complementary recent work in the field now called classical reception has underscored, reports of antiquity's death at the hands of the modern are grossly overrated. 2 The ancient world survived the war as a central part of German and European culture, and not merely as kitsch or as conservative reac- tion, though undeniably interwar classicism (like prewar classicism) had these forms and functions. One of my central aims in this impressionist talk—though regrettably without the many nice pictures I was able to use in the oral version—is to take the GSA's interdisciplinary structure as license to range widely across the worlds of both bourgeois and elite culture in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in the hopes of demonstrating just how much the owed the ancients, and how long, even after four and a half years of mechanized mass murder, many moderns continued to look to antiquity for inspiration, aesthetic pleasure, and consolation. If my argument here proves convincing, I would like to ask if perhaps the time has come to ask for a bit more modesty from modernism, and some deeper recognition that the persistence of the ancient world was not only something crucial to the making of twentieth-century culture, but remains a creative force, still at work around us. In its final pages, however, this talk takes on a second mission, and that is to explore, briefly, the history of scholarship in this period, and especially its relationship to changes in the wider culture of the Kaiserreich and the Weimar

Inside Quantum Repeaters

Most quantum communication tasks need to rely on the transmission of quantum signals over long distances. Unfortunately, transmission of such signals is most often limited by losses in the channel, the same issue that affects classical communication. Simple signal amplification provides an elegant solution for the classical world, but this is not possible in the quantum world, as the no-cloning theorem forbids such an operation and, thus, an alternative approach, a quantum repeater, is needed. Quantum repeaters enable one to create a known maximally entangled state between the end points of the network by first segmenting the network into pieces, creating entanglement between the segments, and then, connecting those entanglement to create the required long range entanglement. Quantum teleportation then allows an unknown quantum message to be transmitted between them using the long-range entangled state. This form of quantum communication will be at the heart of the future quantum Internet. In this review, we will detail various approaches to quantum repeaters, and discuss their expected performance and limitations.

Fabritio Caroso’s Balletti: “The dancer’s own language?”

In the 16th Century, ladies and gentlemen of noble birth were taught from an early age the art of dancing, necessary to survive in the hierarchical world of the court. A Neo-Platonic perspective on dancing was at the core of Renaissance thinking (Humanism) and persisted throughout the 17th Century. In dance circles the principles of harmony and order in the cosmos, harking back to the classical world of Plato and Quintilian, were already well established in Italy by the end of the 15th Century. The balli were structures consisting of many different rhythmic sections throughout which a playful narrative of love, courtship and drama unfolded. By the second half of the 16th Century, two notable dancing masters, Fabritio Caroso and Cesare Negri, were beginning to record their teaching and advice in manuals, which serve as the first known comprehensive and detailed treatises on court dance. By the late 16th Century, the balletto still involved the theatricality of narrative and contrasting or varying emotions. It was still a performance or game for the spectators as well as for the dancers themselves, despite being performed in a social context. In this article, we take a closer look at two balli presented by Caroso: Ardente Sole and Laura Soave, showing that their structure was inspired by rhetorical principles.

Animals in the Classical World: Ethical Perspectives from Greek and Roman Texts

Animals in the Classical World: Ethical Perspectives from Greek and Roman Texts

The classical world is 20 per cent cooler: Greco-Roman pegasi in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

Abstract This article will look at the successful fantasy cartoon series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (2010–) and its representation of Greco-Roman aesthetics in connection with the pegasi tribe in the depiction of the Pegasus city, Cloudsdale, and in the origins of the Pegasus tribe in the episode ‘Hearth’s Warming Eve’. In this episode, the ponies take part in a performance about the founding of their magical homeland, Equestria. The three tribes of ponies all represent different periods: the Earth ponies are Pioneer settlers, the Unicorns are mediaeval nobility, and the Pegasi are militaristic Greco-Roman. The article will explore the depiction of the Pegasi ponies with Greco-Roman elements and what this tells of the popular perception from cinema of the Greeks and celestial landscapes, and the Romans as a militaristic community. It will trace the evolution of these images within various media and how an association was created between Greco-Roman architecture, astral cities and military prowess, and how Pegasus became associated with this military fortitude and ancient world.

Amphibians in Spanish popular medicine and the pharmacopoeia of Pliny and Dioscorides

This article presents a list of medical remedies based on the use of amphibians in Spanish popular medicine and in the classical world. It provides an overview of bibliography relative to folklore studies, ethnographic work and research on social or medical anthropology. It documents a total of 113 remedies and the use of nine species of amphibians, two from the family of caudates (urodeles) and seven anurans. Most of these remedies are based on the popular "preconception" about the influence of amphibians and healing by transmitting an illness to a living creature. The traditional use of certain threatened species is emphasized, an issue to bear in mind in decision-making in the field of conservation biology and environmental education.

Measurement-induced nonlocality based on the trace norm

Nonlocality is one unique property of quantum mechanics that differs from the classical world. One of its quantifications can be properly described as the maximum global effect caused by locally invariant measurements, known as measurement-induced nonlocality (MIN) (2011 Phys. Rev. Lett. 106 120401). Here, we propose quantifying the MIN by the trace norm. We show explicitly that this measure is monotonically decreasing under the action of a completely positive trace-preserving map, which is the general local quantum operation, on the unmeasured party for the bipartite state. This property avoids the undesirable characteristic appearing in the known measure of MIN defined by the Hilbert–Schmidt norm which may be increased or decreased by trivial local reversible operations on the unmeasured party. We obtain analytical formulas of the trace-norm MIN for any -dimensional pure state, two-qubit state, and certain high-dimensional states. As with other quantum correlation measures, the newly defined MIN can be directly applied to various models for physical interpretations.