They used to believe that mankind began in 4004 B.C. and the Greeks in 776. We now know that these last five thousand years during which man has left written record of himself are but a minute fraction of the time he has spent developing his culture. We now understand that the evolution of human society, its laws and customs, its economics, its religious practices, its games, its languages, is a very slow process, to be measured in millennia. In the (...) case of Greek religious usage it is now appreciated that it has its roots not in Mycenaean but in Palaeolithic times. As for Greek poetry, comparative studies have shown that it goes back by a continuous tradition to Indo-European poetry. (shrink)

Based on a reading of Basil’s Ad Adulescentes and the epistles, it is clear that Basil finds moral value in Homer and Hesiod. The trickier issue is to what extent Basil uses Homer and Hesiod in his homilies. It seems that Basil does not abandon his respect for the utility of Hellenic paideia for the Christian in his homilies. Rather, he must approach Homer and Hesiod more gingerly because he fears that his uncultivated audience will have difficulty with reading texts (...) allegorically; at the literal level, Homer and Hesiod can potentially corrupt the unsophisticated listener. What we have in the homilies are less explicit references to Homer and Hesiod—they are the source of literary flourish, the origins of which probably went over the heads of Basil’s audience. As seen above, Basil also uses the poets—when read at the literary level—as counter-examples to Christian conduct. Basil in no way, then ‘lies’ or ‘changes his view’ on Greek paideia, as is oftentimes argued by scholars, but, rather, he adjusts his use of paideia depending on what his audience can handle at any given time. (shrink)

They used to believe that mankind began in 4004 B.C. and the Greeks in 776. We now know that these last five thousand years during which man has left written record of himself are but a minute fraction of the time he has spent developing his culture. We now understand that the evolution of human society, its laws and customs, its economics, its religious practices, its games, its languages, is a very slow process, to be measured in millennia. In the (...) case of Greek religious usage it is now appreciated that it has its roots not in Mycenaean but in Palaeolithic times. As for Greek poetry, comparative studies have shown that it goes back by a continuous tradition to Indo-European poetry. (shrink)

In an interesting paper read some time ago to the Cambridge Philological Society , H. J. M. Milne analysed the first Ode of Sappho and showed that it is constructed according to those principles of poetical form which we should expect to find in the work of so delicate a Greek artist. If more of these lyrics had survived in their entirety, the task of expounding the technique of Greek poetry would be simpler than it is, because (...) naturally the principles are more easily grasped in a short lyric than in epic or drama. (shrink)

This volume brings together Seth Benardete's studies of Hesiod's Theogony, Homer's Iliad, and Greek tragedy, of eleven Platonic dialogues, and Aristotle's Metaphysics. These essays, some never before published, others difficult to find, span four decades of his work and document its impressive range. Benardete's philosophic reading of the poets and his poetic reading of the philosophers share a common ground that makes this collection a whole. The key, suggested by his reflections on Leo Strauss in the last piece, lies (...) in the question of how to read Plato. Benardete's way is characterized not just by careful attention to the literary form that separates doctrine from dialogue, and speeches from deed rather, by following the dynamic of these differences, he uncovers the argument that belongs to the dialogue as a whole. The "turnaround" such an argument undergoes bears consequences for understanding the dialogue as radical as the conversion of the philosopher in Plato's image of the cave. Benardete's original interpretations are the fruits of this discovery of the "argument of the action.". (shrink)

The period from the eighth to the fifth centuries B.C. was one of extraordinary creativity in the Greek-speaking world. Poetry was a public and popular medium, and its production was closely related to developments in contemporary society. At the time when the city states were acquiring their distinctive institutions epic found the greatest of all its exponents in Homer, and lyric poetry for both solo and choral performance became a genre which attracted poets of the first rank, (...) writers of the quality of Sappho, Alcaeus and Pindar, whose influence on later literature was to be profound. This volume covers the epic tradition, the didactic poems of Hesiod and his imitators, and the wide-ranging work of the iambic, elegiac and lyric poets of what is loosely called the archaic age. The contributors make use of recent papyrus finds to fill out the picture of a cosmopolitan and highly sophisticated literary culture which had not yet found its intellectual centre in Athens. (shrink)

The verb λάω is attested in two passages of early epic poetry, Homeric Hymn to Hermes 360, where the infant Hermes is hiding in a dark cave, and τ 229 ff., of a hound seizing a fawn on the brooch of Odysseus. Of the several meanings suggested by the ancient lexicographers for λάω, seeing, gazing, or crying, screeching would suit . These senses recur in their explanations of , with gripping or devouring as additional possibilities. The most extensive modern (...) treatment of λάω is by Leumann, who explains it as a present falsely formed from the perfect λληkα , and originally intended to describe the cry of a bird of prey. The unfamiliarity of the form led to its being associated later on with the sharp-sightedness of such birds, as well as with the bark of a hound fastening on its quarry. (shrink)

The latest volume of the Antinoopolis Papyri contains fragments of some 40 iambic lines in praise of a certain Archelas. The papyrus is dated by J. W. B. Barns, the editor of the piece, to the sixth century A.D., and the poem itself can be no older, since corrections and alterations show it to be an author's draft. According to Barns it is ‘an iambic encomium of a type not uncommon in late Greek occasional poetry from Egypt’. I (...) would suggest rather that the surviving lines come in fact from an iambic preface to a hexameter encomium.In the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries it was standard, if not universal, practice to preface a hexameter poem with an iambic prologue. Since details are not readily available, and are relevant to my argument, I tabulate them here. First the four examples that have come to us by manuscript tradition, as it happens the same manuscript, and all dating from the second half of the sixth century. (shrink)

The verb λάω is attested in two passages of early epic poetry, Homeric Hymn to Hermes 360, where the infant Hermes is hiding in a dark cave, and τ 229 ff., of a hound seizing a fawn on the brooch of Odysseus. Of the several meanings suggested by the ancient lexicographers for λάω, seeing, gazing, or crying, screeching would suit. These senses recur in their explanations of, with gripping or devouring as additional possibilities. The most extensive modern treatment of (...) λάω is by Leumann, who explains it as a present falsely formed from the perfect λ⋯ληkα, and originally intended to describe the cry of a bird of prey. The unfamiliarity of the form led to its being associated later on with the sharp-sightedness of such birds, as well as with the bark of a hound fastening on its quarry. (shrink)

Philosophical reflection on the conditions of knowledge did not begin in a cultural vacuum. Several centuries before the Ionian thinkers began their investigations, the Homeric bards had identified various factors that militate against a secure grasp of the truth. In the words of the ‘second invocation of the Muses’ in Iliad II: “you, goddesses, are present and know all things, whereas we mortals hear only a rumor and know nothing.” Similarly Archilochus: “Of such a sort, Glaucus, son of Leptines, is (...) the mind of mortal man, whatever Zeus may bring him for the day, for he thinks such things as he meets with.” When one adds the truism that the scope of human experience pales in comparison with the synoptic view of events enjoyed by the gods, it follows that for most matters it is for the gods to know and mortals merely to conjecture. Traces of the older ‘poetic pessimism’ can be seen in the teachings of many of the first philosophers. Alcmaeon reaffirms that “while the gods enjoy clear and certain knowledge of all things, mortals must conjecture from signs” (B 1). Although Xenophanes encourages inquiry into a wide range of phenomena, he concludes that “No man has known nor will there be anyone who knows the clear and sure truth concerning the gods and what I say about all things” (B 34). And when philosophers begin to affirm a more optimistic view they often do so in terms that invite comparison with the older outlook. The chief truth Heraclitus claims to have discovered is the logos or ‘basic formula’ which holds everywhere and forever (B 1, 30, 80, and 90). Parmenides provides reason to think that human beings can discover the truth even about things located “far off” (B 4). And both Empedocles and Democritus contrast the inferior awareness of those “who think in terms of what they have met with” with the wisdom available to those who have heard and ponder their teachings (B 131). For these thinkers, separation in space and time—the old ‘locality problem’—no longer posed an impediment to knowledge. -/- . (shrink)

Did archaic Greek poets think that speech should be factually informative? Studies in the "history of thought" suggest that archaic culture offered no developed alternative to the opposition of truth to falsehood judged in relationship to fact. But the mythic poems display more interest in person-to-person agreement than eye-to-object fidelity. This is seen in the numerous stories where partnerships are negotiated and symbolized through tokens whose impersonal value is flagrantly disregarded. In the Hymn to Hermes, facetious non-truths establish intimacy (...) and cooperation among those who understand them. (shrink)

The latest volume of the Antinoopolis Papyri contains fragments of some 40 iambic lines in praise of a certain Archelas. The papyrus is dated by J. W. B. Barns, the editor of the piece, to the sixth century A.D., and the poem itself can be no older, since corrections and alterations show it to be an author's draft. According to Barns it is ‘an iambic encomium of a type not uncommon in late Greek occasional poetry from Egypt’. I (...) would suggest rather that the surviving lines come in fact from an iambic preface to a hexameter encomium. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries it was standard, if not universal, practice to preface a hexameter poem with an iambic prologue. Since details are not readily available, and are relevant to my argument, I tabulate them here. First the four examples that have come to us by manuscript tradition, as it happens the same manuscript, and all dating from the second half of the sixth century. (shrink)

Hermesianax, ap. Athen. 599B, I. 91 = Collectanea Alexandrina p. 100. This is a locus desperatus; but since the reviewer of Collectanea Alexandrina in the Classical Review, XXXIX., p. 192, accepts the idea which underlay my conjecture ξετρνησε, I think of adding to it οѵδϥμνόν τε, which is suggested by Schweighaeuser's οѵδϥμνόν The line will thus run: οѵδϥμνόν τ' ξετρνησε βίον ‘uitam uilem deliciis consumpsit.’ Hesychius has: οѵδαμνός οδένοςλόуου εστ βραύςεύτελής.