Book reviewed in this article: Philosophy in Medicine: Conceptual and Ethical Problems in Medicine and Psychiatry. By Charles M. Culver and Bernard Gert. Psychiatric Ethics. Edited by Sidney Block and Paul Chodoff. Man, Mind, and Morality: The Ethics of Behavior Control. By Ruth Macklin.

Book reviewed in this article: Philosophy in Medicine: Conceptual and Ethical Problems in Medicine and Psychiatry. By Charles M. Culver and Bernard Gert. Psychiatric Ethics. Edited by Sidney Block and Paul Chodoff. Man, Mind, and Morality: The Ethics of Behavior Control. By Ruth Macklin.

The exploration of personal identity and theories of narrative in Narrative Identity and Personal Responsibility is extraordinarily suggestive, resulting in implications for theories of action as well as ethics and psychology. Taking seriously the thought that we mediate our relations with the world by means of self-defining narratives grounded in the natural phenomenon of desire provides new answers to old puzzles of what it means to be human.

The objective of this article was to address the Augustinian call to philosophical life. In discussion with academic skepticism, Saint Augustine exhorts his friend Romanian to search for wisdom and, for this, to also dismiss distrust and excessive confidence in reason, since he argues both against the skeptical position, or despair of finding the truth, and dogmatism or the assurance of having definitely found the truth. In fact, Saint Augustine points out the difficulty of taking knowledge for granted and, therefore, (...) does not rule out skepticism, but rather incorporates it as the initial phase of knowing and as an antidote to the naivety of giving absolute scope to the human faculty of human knowing. In the perspective of this balance, Saint Augustine exhorts Romanian to finish deciding to lead a philosophical life. To travel this path, in continuity with his Neoplatonic readings, he considers beauty as a guide: spiritual beauty is accessed by passing through the cosmic; the contemplating soul, insofar as it corresponds to what is contemplated, can thus reach the ascending path of its own transformation. The method of accessing the texts is philological, that is, it seeks at the same time to decipher the letter of the philosophical plot and to establish a contextual understanding of it. A method of this nature is inseparable from the conceptual framework; indeed, the formation of a philosophical knowledge, which tries to find the limits of the understanding of revelation, puts the person in tension of perfection, that is, it guides them towards their own transcendence. (shrink)

BackgroundThe Arab population in Israel is a minority ethnic group with its own distinct cultural subgroups. Minority populations are known to underutilize genetic tests and counseling services, thereby undermining the effectiveness of these services among such populations. However, the general and culture-specific reasons for this underutilization are not well defined. Moreover, Arab populations and their key cultural-religious subsets (Muslims, Christians, and Druze) do not reside exclusively in Israel, but are rather found as a minority group in many European and North (...) American countries. Therefore, focusing on the Arab population in Israel allows for the examination of attitudes regarding genetic testing and counseling among this globally important ethnic minority population.MethodsWe used a qualitative research method, employing individual interviews with 18 women of childbearing age from three religious subgroups (i.e., Druze, Muslim, and Christian) who reside in the Acre district, along with focus group discussions with healthcare providers (HCPs; 9 nurses and 7 genetic counselors) working in the same geographical district.ResultsA general lack of knowledge regarding the goals and practice of genetic counseling resulting in negative preconceptions of genetic testing was identified amongst all counselees. Counselors’ objective of respecting patient autonomy in decision-making, together with counselees’ misunderstanding of genetic risk data, caused uncertainty, frustration, and distrust. In addition, certain interesting variations were found between the different religious subgroups regarding their attitudes to genetic counseling.ConclusionsThe study highlights the miscommunications between HCPs, particularly counselors from the majority ethno-cultural group, and counselees from a minority ethno-cultural group. The need for nuanced understanding of the complex perspectives of minority ethno-cultural groups is also emphasized. Such an understanding may enhance the effectiveness of genetic testing and counseling among the Arab minority group while also genuinely empowering the personal autonomy of counselees from this minority group in Israel and other countries. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 41, no. 2. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 335 Rachel Lumsden “The Music Between Us”: Ethel Smyth, Emmeline Pankhurst, and “Possession” But limelight is bad for me: the light in which I work best is twilight. —Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth1 There are few composers who seemed to seek the glow of public limelight more than Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944). Smyth fearlessly forged (...) a career for herself as a professional composer in Britain during a time when female musicians were largely regarded as inferior to male musicians and lacked equal educational and professional opportunities. Smyth’s brazen personality was evident from her early years; as a teenager, she battled for two years to gain her father’s approval to travel to Leipzig to further her musical studies. Smyth’s struggle for acceptance as a composer continued throughout her career; she composed large-scale works—including six operas—at a time when women were expected to write “feminine,” small-scale compositions (such as solo piano pieces and songs), and she fought unrelentingly to have her music performed. Throughout her career Smyth faced a barrage of sexist criticism, in which she was consistently referred to as a “lady composer” and alternatively praised and derided for writing “masculine” music: if a 1. Virginia Woolf, letter to Ethel Smyth (August 21, 1932), in The Letters of Virginia Woolf, ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 5: 97. 336 Rachel Lumsden critic liked her work, it would be lauded for its “masculine strength,” and if a critic didn’t like her work, it would be admonished for exceeding the bounds of female propriety.2 Yet Smyth rarely flinched from battles. A defiant and prolific writer, Smyth also published an exhaustive array of books and memoirs: Impressions that Remained (1919), Streaks of Life (1921), A Three-Legged Tour in Greece (1927), A Final Burning of Boats (1928), Female Pipings in Eden (1933), Beecham and Pharaoh (1935), As Time Went On (1936), Inordinate (?) Affection (1936), Maurice Baring (1938), and What Happened Next (1940), using her literary works as a means of bringing her own experiences into the limelight. By chronicling the oppression and discrimination she consistently faced, she sought not only to draw attention to herself as a composer—whose works, in her mind, had been consistently and unjustly neglected by the public—but also to highlight the plight of female musicians in general. Smyth’s literary works are wide-ranging and cover a host of different subjects, including recollections about her own life, biographical portraits of close friends, excerpts from letters, reviews of her musical compositions, and her forthright opinions about women’s rights. A number of scholars have explored these different aspects of Ethel Smyth’s fascinating artistic career; however, most research on Smyth has focused either on her literary endeavors or her compositions. What is missing is a thoroughgoing analysis of the connections between the two. One exception is Elizabeth Wood, who has brilliantly discussed Smyth’s writings and music; however, many details of Smyth’s vast array of musical works still remain largely unexplored.3 This article examines 2. Smyth’s operas include Fantasio (1892–1894), Der Wald (1899–1901), The Wreckers (1902–1904), The Boatswain’s Mate (1913–1914), Fête Galante (1921– 1922), and Entente Cordiale (1923–1924). For more information about Smyth and the status of female musicians in Britain during this era, see Jane A. Bernstein, “‘Shout, Shout, Up with Your Song!’ Dame Ethel Smyth and the Changing Role of the British Woman Composer,” in Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150–1950, ed. Jane Bowers and Judith Tick (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 304–24; and Eugene Gates, “Damned If You Do and Damned If You Don’t: Sexual Aesthetics and the Music of Dame Ethel Smyth,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 31, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 63–71. 3. See Elizabeth Wood, “Performing Rights: A Sonography of Women’s Suffrage,” The Musical Quarterly 79, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 606–43; and Elizabeth Rachel Lumsden 337 a small, specific slice of Smyth’s oeuvre: her 1913 song “Possession,” dedicated to Emmeline Pankhurst (“E.P”), her friend and leader of... (shrink)

Resumen: Entre el pensamiento de José Gaos y el de Eduardo Nicol se cierne una diferencia sustancial en torno al concepto de la filosofía. Para el primero, ésta es una suerte de confesión personal; mientras que para Nicol la filosofía debe ser producto de una hazaña dialógica y el conocimiento tiene que ser objetivo.: José Gaos’s and Eduardo Nicol’s concepts of philosophy differ substantially. For the former, philosophy is a sort of personal confession, whereas for the later it must be (...) the outcome of dialogical achievement, and as for knowledge, this has to be objective. (shrink)

_Psychoanalysis and Women_, Volume 32 of _The Annual of Psychoanalysis_, is a stunning reprise on theoretical, developmental, and clinical issues that have engaged analysts from Freud on. It begins with clinical contributions by Joyce McDougall and Lynne Layton, two theorists at the forefront of clinical work with women; Jessica Benjamin, Julia Kristeva, and Ethel Spector Person, from their respective vantage points, all engage the issue of passivity, which Freud tended to equate with femininity. Employing a self-psychological framework, Christine (...) Kieffer returns to the Oedipus complex and sheds new light on the typically Pyrrhic oedipal victory of little girls. Section III broadens the historical context of contemporary theorizing about women by offering the personal reminiscences of Nancy Chodorow, Carol Gilligan, Brenda Solomon, and Malkah Notman. A final section, dedicated to "women who shared psychoanalysis," features historical essays on Ida Bauer, Anna Freud, Dorothy Burlingham, Edith Jacobson, and Therese Benedek, along with Linda Hopkins's revealing interview of Marion Milner. Of special note is Marian Tolpin's examination of three women - Bauer, Helene Deutch, and Anna Freud - who helped shape Freud's notion of the "femail castration complex," and Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's exploration of how two women - Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham - developed parent-infant observation. _Psychoanalysis and Women_ is an extraordinary chronicle of the distance traveled since Freud characterized women's sexual life as "the dark continent." The contributors vitalize a half century of theory with the lessons of biography, and they broaden clinical sensibilities by drawing on recent developmental, gender-related, and socio-psychological research. In doing so, they attest to the ongoing reconfiguration of Freud's dark continent and show the psychoanalytic psychology of women to be very much a revolution in progress. (shrink)

The "Kinsey Report" suggests the existence of such a mentality. Of 142 women with much homosexual experience, 70 percent reported no regrets. This consciousness has manifested itself in literature in two ways. First, in lesbian romanticism: fusions of life and death, happiness and woe, natural imagery and supernatural strivings, neoclassical paganism with a ritualistic cult of Sappho, and modern beliefs in evolutionary progress with a cult of the rebel. At its worst an inadvertent parody of fin de siecle decadence, at (...) its best lesbian romanticism ruthlessly rejects a stifling dominant culture and asserts the value of psychological autonomy, women, art, and a European civilization of the sensuous, sensual, and voluptuous. Woolf's Orlando is its most elegant and inventive text, but its symbol is probably the career of Natalie Barney, the cosmopolitan American who was the prototype of Valerie Seymour.23· 23. See Rubin, introduction to Vivien's A Woman Appeared to Me, and George Wickes, The Amazon of Letters: The Life and Loves of Natalie Barney .Catherine R. Stimpson, professor of English at Rutgers University, is the former editor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. The author of both critical essays and fiction, she recently co-edited, with Ethel Spector Person, Women, Sex and Sexuality. (shrink)

It is hardly necessary to rent I Spit on Your Grave or Tool Box Murders for your VCR in order to find images of sexuality contaminated by depersonalization or violence. As far back as Rabelais’ Gargantua, for example, Panurge proposes to build a wall around Paris out of the pleasure-twats of women [which] are much cheaper than stones”: “the largest … in front” would be followed by “the medium-sized, and last of all, the least and smallest,” all interlaced with “many (...) horney joy-dinguses” so that fortification would be impregnable, except for the “ordure and excretions” of the flies it would doubtlessly attract.1 Two centuries later, one of Rabelais’ compatriots, the Marquis de Lade, described the rage of a sexually initiated daughter against a woman who refuses to consider her “pleasure-twat” “cheaper than stones.” The Sadeian heroine first sodomizes her puritanical mother with an artificial penis, then has her infected with syphilis, and finally performs infibulations to prevent the infected semen from leaking out: “Quickly, quickly, fetch me needle and threat! … Spread your thighs, Mama, so I can stitch you together.”2One century later in England, the author of My Secret Life explained that, when in a state of sexual excitement, “he is ready to fuck anything,” from his sister to his grandmother, from a ten-year-old, to a woman of sixty, for a standing prick has no conscience.” To this credo, he adds the admonition, “Woe be to the female whom he gets a chance at, if she does not want him, for he will have her if he can.”3 The sexually aroused man in the contemporary American film Looking for Mr. Goodbar curses the woman who does not want him as much as she wants a room of her own and the freedom to choose a succession of male lovers. After he resentfully determines to have her when he gets the chance , he rapes her and finally knifes her to death, exclaiming “That’s what you want, bitch, right? That’s what you want.”However these individual works are labeled, such passages remind us of the long history of pornography, a gender-specific genre produced primarily by and for men but focused obsessively on the female figure. In their depictions of female sexuality, narratives from Gargantua to La Philosophie dans le boudoir, My Secret Life, and Looking for Mr. Goodbar explain why definitions of the pornographic have recently moved away from “obscenity,” a term that generally refers to the sexually stimulating effects of a picture, a novel, or a film on the male reader/observer, and toward “dehumanization,” a word that is used to evoke the objectification of women. As Irene Diamond has demonstrated, during the past decade the generally held assumption that pornography is about male sexuality has been qualified by those who argue that “the ‘what’ of pornography is not sex but power and violence, and the ‘who’ of concern are no longer male consumers and artists but women.”4 1. François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, trans. Jacques Le Clercq , bk. 2, chap. 15. I have used this translation because it is employed in Helene Iswolsky’s translation of Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World . With no analysis of gender, Bakhtin’s exclusive focus on the grotesque wipes out the significance of Rabelais’ sexual imagery.2. Marquis de Sade, quoted in a brilliant reading of this text by Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography , p. 127; all further references to this work , abbreviated SW, will be included in the text.3. My Secret Life , p. 361.4. Irene Diamond, “Pornography and Repression: A Reconsideration,” in Women: Sex and Sexuality, ed. Catharine Stimpson and Ethel Spector Person , p. 132. Susan Gubar is professor of English and women’s studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. Together with Sandra M. Gilbert, she has coauthored The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination and co-edited both Shakespeare’s Sisters: Feminist Essays on Women Poets and the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English. This fall they will publish the first volume of a three-volume work, No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century. Her previous contribution to Critical Inquiry is “ ‘The Blank Page’ and the Issues of Female Creativity”. (shrink)

Gender scholars argued that gendered organizations theory needs updating as organizational logic has shifted amid neoliberal workplace transformations. This qualitative case study of a high-tech firm reveals how features of the traditional work logic remain resilient. I analyze the gendered implications of a high-tech startup restructuring and going public, finding the flexible organization to bureaucratize, implementing specialized jobs and a hierarchy with standardized career ladders. Going public creates conflicting gendered logics that place women at a structural disadvantage, relegating them to (...) low-status, narrow jobs while simultaneously demanding masculine ideal worker norms of visibility and self-promotion. Despite networking, women experience job insecurity and a glass ceiling, while men are assumed ideal workers and advance. By tracing one high-tech firm’s restructuring from a startup to public company, I demonstrate how the collision of new and traditional workplace logics perpetuates gender inequalities. (shrink)

Women philosophers have not received their due in the discipline's reference works. Kersey's international biographical dictionary of women philosophers from ancient times up until the present redresses that situation.... This very capably fills a very evident gap in the philosophy reference corpus. Wilson Library Bulletin This work developed from Kersey's discovery that there existed no biographical dictionaries of women philosophers, and few references to women in textbooks on the history of philosophy. Intended to fill that void, this source book covers (...) more than 170 women born before 1920 who wrote about or pondered questions of Western intellectual life. Using broad criteria, Kersey has included any woman who conducted serious work in the traditional fields of philosophy, including metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, or logic. Although acknowledging that the field has been dominated by men, the author excluded feminist scholars on the grounds that they have been given serious attention elsewhere, and also omitted women theologians or devotional writers. The volume includes extensive bibliographies of both primary and secondary works about each philosopher. An in-depth introduction establishes the context for the reference, and an appendix provides charts showing women philosophers by century, nationality, and discipline. An index of names completes the source book. This reference will be an important addition to university and public libraries, and a valuable reference for courses in philosophy and women's studies. (shrink)

Présentation:L’année 2015 marque le dixième anniversaire de la mort de Raymond Klibansky, philosophe et historien des idées canadien. La revueDialoguelui rend hommage en publiant le texte qui suit de Mme Ethel Groffier, veuve de Raymond Klibansky et chercheure émérite au Centre de recherche Paul-André Crépeau en droit privé et comparé de l’Université McGill. Dans cette intervention, Mme Groffier rappelle l’importance de l’engagement dans la vie et l’œuvre de ce remarquable philosophe.Né en France au mois d’octobre 1905 dans une famille (...) allemande, éduqué en Allemagne à partir de la Première guerre, exilé en Angleterre en 1933, Raymond Klibansky s’installa à Montréal dès 1946, à l’invitation de l’Université McGill. Sa carrière académique au Canada et à l’étranger fut admirable et reconnue par de nombreux hommages. Il laisse derrière lui une œuvre imposante, tant en philosophie qu’en histoire des idées modernes; parmi ces idées, il s’attacha particulièrement à la tolérance et à la liberté, qui inspirèrent toute sa vie.Luc LangloisPresentation:The year 2015 marked the 10thanniversary of Raymond Klibansky’s death. As a tribute to this prominent Canadian philosopher and historian of ideas,Dialogueis proud to publish the following intervention by Ethel Groffier, Raymond Klibansky’s widow and Emeritus scholar at McGill University’s Paul-André Crépeau Centre for Private and Comparative Law. Groffier reminds us of the importance of engagement—understood in the strong, philosophical sense—in this philosopher’s life and works.Born in France in October 1905 to a German family, raised in Germany from World War I to 1933, and then forced to move to the United Kingdom, Klibansky settled in Montreal in 1946 following an invitation from McGill University. His academic career in Canada and abroad is admirable and has been acclaimed on numerous occasions. He left behind an impressive body of work in philosophy and in the history of modern ideas; among these ideas, freedom and tolerance inspired his entire life.Luc Langlois. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore experiences of participation in treatment planning decisions from the perspective of patients recently treated for colorectal cancer. Ten patients were purposively selected and interviewed. Constant comparative analysis, the core concept of grounded theory, was used. The dimensions were developed and organized into the main theme of ‘compliant participation in serious decisions’, which was composed of the two variations: complying with participation; and complying without participation. Complying with participation was characterized by feelings of (...) self-confidence and self-competence and by open dialogue between the participants, significant others and the physician. Complying without participation was characterized by participants’ feelings of uncertainty and distress, and of being rushed into submitting to decisions without having time to reflect on the information provided or the opportunity to influence the treatment and care process. To participate builds on open and affirming dialogue, information and knowledge about the illness. Patient participation in treatment and care decision making is interpreted as a health promoting way of coping with illness. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Neste artigo, pretendo examinar a tese cartesiana da livre criação das verdades eternas a partir da conjugação dos atributos divinos que, segundo Descartes, são conhecidos por nós e sua tese de que, entre as verdades eternas livremente criadas por Deus, estão incluídos os princípios lógicos. A partir desse exame, concluo que, até onde o intelecto finito do homem pode conceber, a tese cartesiana da livre criação das verdades eternas envolve ao menos as seguintes teses: a) Deus, por ser infinito e (...) puro pensamento em ato, estabelece necessariamente em si todas as essências e verdades, incluindo essências e verdades que para o intelecto finito parecem impossíveis, já que lhe aparecem como contraditórias; b) ao estabelecer as essências e verdades, Deus instancia algumas (e assim as cria) como conteúdos de ideias inatas nas mentes finitas, que são criadas com estrutura lógica; c) ao estabelecer as essências e verdades, Deus instancia no mundo atual ao menos algumas das essências e verdades não contraditórias instanciadas nas mentes finitas; e d) embora a mente humana finita não as possa conceber clara e distintamente, é certo que Deus instancia no mundo atual ao menos algumas das essências e verdades que aparecem como contraditórias, isto é, instancia no mundo atual ao menos algumas das essências e verdades que para a mente finita aparecem como impossíveis por serem por ela inconcebíveis, o que é confirmado por ao menos dois casos mencionados por Descartes. In this article I intend to examine the Cartesian view on the free creation of the eternal truths considering the conjunction of the divine attributes, which according to the Cartesian thesis, are known to us and his thesis that logical principles are among the eternal truths freely created by God. From this examination I conclude that, as far as the finite intellect of man can conceive, the Cartesian view of the free creation of the eternal truths involves at least the following theses: a) being pure and infinite thinking in action, God necessarily sets in himself all the form of essence and truth, including all essence and truth that for, the finite intellect, seem impossible since they may appear to him as contradictory; b) while establishing all essence and truth, God instantiates some of them (and thus creates some of them) as contents of innate ideas in finite minds, which are created with a logical structure; c) while establishing all essence and truth God instantiates in the actual world at least some of the non-contradictory essences which are instantiated in the finite mind; and d) although the finite human mind cannot conceive it clearly and distinctly, it is certain that God instantiates in the actual world at least some of essence and truth that seem to be contradictory for the human mind, that is, God instantiates at least some of the essences and truths which appear to the finite mind as impossible since inconceivable, which is confirmed by at least two cases mentioned by Descartes. (shrink)

Ofrecemos una lectura de Un hogar sólido de Elena Garro en relación con los postulados de la tragedia griega, en particular las nociones de destino, culpa y conocimiento, para resaltar la posición femenina que presenta la autora a través de la cual cuestiona las convenciones de su época. Primero presentamos la idiosincrasia de los personajes para resaltar la materia trágica que aporta la protagonista de la pieza y fundamentar su carácter de heroína. En la circunstancia existencial de las mujeres se (...) plantea la oposición del destino y la libertad, aunque la búsqueda de la autonomía será el camino de la afirmación de la identidad. La autora confronta a la protagonista con la determinación del destino, expone su decisión y verifica su caída; en las diferencias propuestas entre la tragedia griega y la tragedia mexicana, se critican las estructuras socioculturales y los estereotipos de género. Elena Garro confirma el papel político del teatro y la misión del héroe en la comunidad. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Since the days of Merula it has been regularly assumed by editors and critics of Ennius that, despite the express statement of Cicero to the contrary, the Annales did contain some narrative of the events of the first Punic War. Familiar as the passage in the Brutus is, it must be quoted once again: “Tamen illius quem uatibus et Faunis annumerat Ennius Bellum Punicum quasi Myronis opus delectat. Sit Ennius sane, ut est certe, perfectior: qui, si ilium, ut simulat, contemneret, (...) non omnia bella persequens, primm illud Punicum, acerrimum bellum, reliquisset”. (shrink)

Despite the discredit into which the once famous theory of Niebuhr has long sincefallen, it is beginning to appear, both to historians and to students of literature, that Epic poetry was in full process of evolution at Rome before Livius Andronicus was inspired to translate the Odyssey. There is, indeed, ample evidence to warrant such a belief; our authorities may most conveniently be considered in two main divisions. The first calls for no more than the barest mention, for it is (...) concerned with those Naeniae and Cantus Conuiuiales the existence of which is not seriously challenged by even the most conservative criticism. They are well attested, and the evidence for their extreme antiquity is familiar to every reader of Cicero. In passing we may mention also Saturnian epitaphs like those of the Scipios, and the Tituli Triumphales set up in the Capitol. Typical lines are: Fundit, fugat, prosternit maximas legiones, from the inscription of M'Acilius Glabrio, and Summas opes qui regum regias refregit. (shrink)