Greek Model Research Articles

Tragic Effect in Samson Agonistes

Misled by Milton's prefatory emphasis on his Greek models, an emphasis entirely justified if properly understood, critics have assumed that the poet intended not only to follow them in structure and convention but to reproduce their spirit and effect, and that hence the only possible criterion for judging Samson Agonistes is Greek tragedy. Opinions on his success have differed. Jebb (to take a famous example) vigorously defends Milton against Johnson's charge that Samson Agonistes has a beginning and end but no middle, that nothing occurs to precipitate the catastrophe. But he goes on to condemn the drama as not truly tragic, as not Hellenic at all in spirit and effect, but thoroughly Hebraic. It does not, like Greek tragedy, pit the hero against superior powers before which he goes down to inevitable defeat, yet demonstrates his heroism even in his defeat. On the contrary, Samson is an instrument of the Supreme Power, and the only possible conclusion is that "All is best." Nor, in the most vigorous and effective defence against Jebb, does W. R. Parker question the assumption that Greek tragedy furnishes the sole and sufficient criterion. But it is precisely this assumption that I would question.

An Indian Contribution to the Study of Arabic Lexicography—The “Bulgha” of Muḥammad Ṣiḍḍīq Ḥasan Khan Bahādur (1832–1890)

We are at present witnessing a timely revival of interest in Arabic lexicography. The completion of Lane's Dictionary is planned by the International Congress of Orientalists. A small part of Noldecke's projected dictionary has been printed. J. Kraemer has drawn attention to Fischer's voluminous notes for a new dictionary of classical Arabic. All this fills a real need, but it contributes only incidentally to the study of Arabic lexicography. Indeed, the tendency is now to obtain material for dictionaries from Arabic literature direct, rather than from the old philological works. On the other hand, there are signs that the study of Arabic lexicography as an end in itself, rather than as a source of vocabulary, is gaining ground. There is the new Beirouth edition of the Lisān al 'Arab. Moreover, two theses on Arabic lexicography have recently been presented for higher degrees—that of L. Kopf to Jerusalem, and that of A. Darwish (dealing especially with al Khalīl ibn Aḥmad and the Kitāb al ‘Ain) to London. Still, there is a pressing need for more work in this field, which presents fascinating problems. For example, whence did the Arabs derive their lexicographical technique? What influence had Greek and Sanskrit models? What does European lexicography—a comparatively late growth—owe to the Arabs. These questions are not yet answered and they are not likely to be answered so long as Semiticists and Indo-European philologists work in isolation. Moreover, lexicography is hardly taken seriously as a science even now and little has been written on European lexicography.

Was the Neronia a Freak Festival?

In A.D. 60 Nero instituted at Rome a quinquennale certamen which he called Neronia. It was in three sections—athletics, chariot-racing, and music (which included singing, and recitations in prose and verse)—after a Greek model. This model would be that of the Pythian rather than of the Olympic Games, for at the latter there was no regular musical contest; though perhaps Nero got his immediate inspiration from the Augustalia at Naples, which was an athletic and musical festival of a religious nature.

The Holy See and the Byzantine Church and Empire

My intention here is to make a few reflections on the relations between the Papacy and the Byzantine Empire and Church, mostly from the cultural point of view. I wish to point out how the Popes continued for several centuries—from 1054 to 1453—to keep their attention fixed on the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, even after dissent had developed in the Byzantine clergy: how the Popes helped by their policy to bring about a new convergence of Greek culture with the Latin one, a convergence which gave birth to the Renaissance.The cultural break between Eastern and Western Europe had its distant origin in the resolution taken by Emperor Diocletian at the beginning of his reign to divide the responsibilities of power. For about a thousand years before 284 A.D., the trend had been to join together die various peoples around the Mediterranean Sea and to amalgamate their individual cvivilizations. Hundreds of years before the rise of Rome, the Greek colonies developed in southern Italy, in Sicily and as far north on the Tyrrhenian Sea as Cumae. The first signs of Greek influence in central Italy were in art: protocorinthian vases appeared as early as the seventh century B.C.; then terracotta works from Greek models in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. Greek divinities were received in Rome at the beginning of the sixth century. In die middle of the fifth century, the Law of the Twelve Tables was framed after three commissioners had been sent to Greece to examine the best of Greek legislation.

Etruscan Reliefs of the Hellenistic Period

The purpose of this article is to present an account of the manner in which the changing styles of Greek Hellenism are reflected in later Etruscan reliefs. I have selected among the Etruscan urns and sarcophagi those reliefs which show in their style the closest reflection of Greek models; they are usually reliefs of superior quality, and can serve as fixed points around which to group other Etruscan reliefs. This method has one important advantage: it overcomes the difficulty created by the regional isolationism of later Etruscan schools. As is well known, Etruscan sculptors were apt to repeat the same composition in a great number of reliefs. An enterprising artist would create a new composition, usually by refashioning a Greek model. His colleagues in the same workshop, or at least in the same city, would copy him; and the process of re-copying might go on for several generations, resulting in ever cruder reproductions of the same design. Thus Greek compositions, long abandoned in their native land, could survive in Tuscany for a considerable length of time. And, in the case of later terracotta urns, re-copying even assumed a purely mechanical character. The original relief ‘A’ would be used to take a mould ‘B’; from this, in turn, new imprints would be taken; they, in turn, would serve as forms for new moulds.

Seneca the Satirist

The fame of Seneca rests on his work as a philosopher and a writer of tragedies on the Greek model. But he can also lay claim to be a humorist. For in what perhaps was an unguarded moment he wrote an amusing satire on the emperor Claudius with the strange title Apocolocyntosis.The piece is so inconsistent with the high tone of his philosophical writings that it has received from critics almost universal reprobation. Seneca's admirers would be better pleased if his authorship could be questioned. But there is no ground for supposing that the satire is by another pen.It might be thought that the writer who composed the funeral oration on Claudius could not be so base as to switch so quickly from eulogy to satire. But the formality of a graveside encomium need not preclude more honest sentiments when the funeral is over. It may well be that even in the panegyric Seneca had his tongue in his cheek, for Tacitus remarks that when the speaker (it was Nero) referred to the wisdom and foresight of the dead prince no one could refrain from laughter.The title presents a problem, for there is no mention in the satire of the transformation of Claudius into a gourd or pumpkin. This has led some to the view that the work is incomplete. Others hold, with the support of Lewis and Short, that the word for a gourd, cucurbita, was used in the metaphorical sense of ‘fathead’ or ‘blockhead’, like the German Kürbiskopf, and thus it is assumed that the witticism is limited to the title.

Religion and Social Organisation in Central Polynesia

THE curiosity which Polynesia excited in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was not of the scientific kind which searches for facts on which to base generalizations ; it was the curiosity of dilettantes. Explorers, sailors and missionaries did not pursue their inquiries to the point at which they would begin to demonstrate but cease to amuse, nor were they prepared to subject the blossoms of imagination to the icy blasts of scientific criticism. To entertain they had to be intelligible, and to be intelligible they had to transpose Polynesian customs into a European mode. The European mind was imbued from childhood with Greek mythology, so Williams arranged the Fijian gods into a pantheon on the Greek model, an arrangement more convenient than true. Religion and Social Organisation in Central Polynesia Robert W. Williamson Dr. Ralph Piddington Pp. xxx + 340. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1937.) 25s. net.

Archæological Investigations in Syria

SIR LEONARD WOOLLEY'S report on the work of the British Museum's archaeological expedition to Sueidia, near Antioch, immediately before closing down work for the season (The Times, July 31) records the completion of excavation in the reserved area of the harbour site and the cutting of trial trenches on and around the hill station at Sabounia, two and a half miles inland. At the latter point, while the existence of a walled town at least as early as the Mycenaean age is established, the fall of the walls through the disintegration of the sandstone cliffs, on the edge of which they were erected, has effectually disposed of the possibility of profitable excavation. Here, however, a find of vessels of copper and implements of bronze and iron has afforded instructive evidence of agricultural practice in Syria in the Byzantine age. At Sheikh Yusuf al Gharib further evidence was afforded of the activity of the port in the second half of the fourth century B.C., in the form of merchants' magazines, which had been burned, but had preserved a detailed picture of trade. A lamp store was stocked with lamps of both the imported and the locally made varieties, lamp fillers and Syrian oil bottles copying Greek models, while the stock of painted Attic aryballi bore witness to a common origin in common characteristics which made it possible to trace a definite shipment by a single firm and to date it within a few years. Gold and silver beads and silver coins of Athens, copper ingots and loose quicksilver marked a jeweller's shop. Back to the ninth century this is the most important Greek colony so far excavated. The absence of evidence from the earlier Mycenaean age is to be attributed to the forces of Nature, which have washed away the earlier portions of the site. Yet there is a link in a local copy of a Mycenaean vase and a single sherd of fine hand-made burnished black ware, which alone would suggest an earlier date. Though no inscription has been found, it is suggested that this is the ancient Posidium, mentioned by Herodotus as founded before the Mycenaean age.

Catullan Echoes in the Odes of Horace

IN HIS pocket edition of Horace, Walter Savage Landor scribbled on a margin opposite the twenty-seventh ode of Book iii sad stuff. Much has been said about this ode, and most of it in disparagement, but criticism has not gone far beyond the uncritical verdict of Landor. It has, to be sure, been constantly pointed out that the opening stanzas are lacking in clarity and that the local setting for the ancient myth is not presented with Horace's customary skill; also that the transition from the setting to the myth is at least a trifle awkward. All this is merely a detailed elaboration of the feeling that inspired Landor's sad stuff. Bergk undertook a more critical analysis of the poem and proposed the theory that Horace was following Simonides when he wrote this ode and that the model was a dithyramb by the Greek lyricist. It is true that the story of Europa was the subject of a dithyramb by Simonides, but the subject was also treated by Stesichorus and by Bacchylides, and it is difficult to follow Bergk precisely without further evidence. To confirm the theory of a Greek model it has been pointed out that the omen of the laevus picus (1. 15) is a Greek conception in contrast with the Latin and that the use of the infinitive in line 73 is essentially a Greek usage. There is not a great deal in any of this which is at all conclusive. The poem is obviously far from a perfect one, and it suggests at least the study of a Greek model. Before accepting the suggestion of dithyrambic origin, one should consider the form of the poem in relation with others of Horace's Odes more successful but not unlike this one in construction. The fact

The Coincidence of Accent and Ictus in Plautus and Terence

Previous articleNext article FreeThe Coincidence of Accent and Ictus in Plautus and TerenceE. H. SturtevantE. H. Sturtevant Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Classical Philology Volume 14, Number 3Jul., 1919 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/360232 Views: 155Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.