For about a hundred years there has been an intermittent but sometimes vigorous debate1 on the question whether Quintus Smyrnaeus and Tryphiodorus directly used the Second Aeneid as a source for their epic descriptions “of the capture and destruction of Troy. Heyne thought that they did not; but towards the end of the nineteenth century it appeared more likely that they did. Heinze opposed the general belief: but it was reaffirmed for Quintus by Paschal and Becker4 and for Tryphiodorus by (...) Dr. E. Cesareo on internal evidence. Meanwhile Professor Samuel E. Bassett had concluded that Quintus was not after all dependent on Vergil: and still more recently Dr. J. W. Mackail, reviewing Cesareo's monograph, has maintained with emphasis that the Aeneid is certainly not the source of the late epic. Accordingly the controversy cannot even now be considered closed. (shrink)

For about a hundred years there has been an intermittent but sometimes vigorous debate1 on the question whether Quintus Smyrnaeus and Tryphiodorus directly used the Second Aeneid as a source for their epic descriptions “of the capture and destruction of Troy. Heyne thought that they did not; but towards the end of the nineteenth century it appeared more likely that they did. Heinze opposed the general belief: but it was reaffirmed for Quintus by Paschal and Becker4 and for Tryphiodorus by (...) Dr. E. Cesareo on internal evidence. Meanwhile Professor Samuel E. Bassett had concluded that Quintus was not after all dependent on Vergil: and still more recently Dr. J. W. Mackail, reviewing Cesareo's monograph, has maintained with emphasis that the Aeneid is certainly not the source of the late epic. Accordingly the controversy cannot even now be considered closed. (shrink)

Prompted by Levy’s observations and questions, our brief review of symbolic space in ancient Greece suggests that some features of Greek culture that at first sight seem rationalist and modernizing, signs of the transformation of the archaic city, were deeply rooted in the culture of the city-states from as early as we can study them.11 It may be that they are factors that contributed to the intellectual process referred to as the breakthrough or enlightenment which is not easily attributed entirely (...) to economic and social changes in the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE. The largely secular political tradition is sometimes, and plausibly, invoked as a cause (cf. Humphreys 1986). It should probably be seen as part of the overall ordering of the sacred vis-à-vis the profane. By the later fourth century BCE, contact with a larger, multiethnic world and the growth of impersonal market relationships produced or hastened secondary urbanization and with it the fracturing of a social coherence. In the intervening classical period, in some areas, such as drama, festival, and the visual arts, the first stirrings of the enlightenment may actually have fostered a more intense deployment of traditional resources. The symbolic use of space in the Greek cities probably never matched, despite important similarities, the more complex traditional systems of their South Asian counterparts. Greece’s traditional culture only reached its acme when new winds were blowing (and even because of them), but before they had swept away the delicate links that held the culture together. (shrink)

Epitomized in the bodily exhibitions of ‘fitspiration’, photo-based social media is biased toward self-beautification and glorification of reality. Meanwhile, evidence is growing of psychological side effects connected to this ‘pictorial turn’ in our communication. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche poses the question how ugliness and discord can produce aesthetic pleasure. This paper proceeds from an inverse relationship and examines why glorification of appearances and conspicuous beauty fails to do the same, and even compounds suffering. Drawing on the Apollo-Dionysus dualism (...) undergirding Nietzsche’s aesthetic philosophy, I posit a deeper relation between the saturation of visual self-exhibitionism typified in fitspiration and its empirical effects. Concentrating on the medium and self-representational photograph, I argue that Instagram is primarily an instrument of Apolline artifice and that the pictorial turn which defines the present centers Apolline mediation to the detrimental exclusion of meaningful communion with its Dionysiac antithesis. For users immersed in this Apolline sphere of visual self-representation, a fractured existence beholden to conditions of the image ensues—comprising surface-level appearances, deification of the moment, and loss of existential sustenance through myth. By positioning fitspiration not as an aberration but as the logical conclusion of the medium’s intrinsic Apolline property, it becomes a litmus test of the entire visual landscape and illustrative of the implications that uncritical participation in it may bring. (shrink)

Until now psychoanalytic literature has paid little attention to the psychoanalytic consulting room or the arrangement of couch and armchair and their likely effect on the psychoanalytic process. In this qualitative study, the answers of 20 former analysands reporting about their analyses in a guided interview were interpreted. It was found that room and psychoanalytic process interact very closely with one another. In the course of the analysis analysands define room implicitly in five different ways unaware of their doing so. (...) Room is defined as 1 the complete room in which the couch and armchair stand. Subjectively, the analysand is in the analyst’s room and is assigned a place on the couch for his own use. Analysis consists mainly on the analysand’s adapting to the analytic procedure. 2 the couch setting. Subjectively, the analysand is in his own room. Psychoanalysis consists mainly of regressive dyadic interactions between analysand and analyst. The analysand idealizes the room and is unaware of any irritating element. 3 the couch. Subjectively, the analysand is in his own room, concentrating on the confrontation with himself during the analytic work. The analyst accompanies the process mainly protectively by having the consulting room ready. 4 the complete room with all its details as the basis of the analysand’s own concept of a room. The analysand has an increasingly critical view of the consulting room, the analyst and all the details of the analytic process. He now becomes fully aware of all the elements belonging to room and process. He conceptualises his own idea of the perfect room. His often vehement criticism of all the elements of the room is central to the analytic work at this stage. 5 the complete consulting room including the couch setting. After the end of his analysis, the analysand returns to his old consulting room and discovers, mainly unconsciously, that his former consulting room has become foreign to him. He is no longer in his own room and soberly looks at an unattractive room in which he once experienced all the decisive periods of his life. The analysand goes through these five phases respectively. The process is not reversible. On account of the interaction stated between room perception and psychoanalytic process this room theory can serve as a means of efficacy research in order to evaluate the depth of the psychoanalytic process and the qualitative personality changes within it. (shrink)