I define humility as a virtue that includes both proper self-assessment and a self-lowering other-centeredness. I then argue that humility, so understood, is a virtue in the context of sport, for several reasons. Humility is a component of sportspersonship, deters egoism in sport, fuels athletic aspiration and risk-taking, fosters athletic forms of self-knowledge, decreases the likelihood of an athlete seeking to strongly humiliate her opponents or be weakly humiliated by them, and can motivate an athlete to achieve greater levels of (...) excellence in her sport. In the context of team sports, humility can contribute to an athlete being a better teammate, foster unity amidst diversity within a team, and contribute to the overall moral and athletic excellence of a team. I also argue that an individual who is truly the world's greatest athlete can know and communicate this truth, while remaining humble. (shrink)

y title links together kings, war, and the economy, and the linkage is deliberate. I do not of course wish to suggest that Hellenistic kings did nothing but fight wars, that they were responsible for all the wars in the period, that royal wars were nothing but a form of economic activity, or that the economy of the kings was dependent purely on the fruits of military success, though there would be an element of truth in all these propositions. But (...) I wish to react against the frequent tendency to separate topics that are related, the tendency to treat notions relating to what kings were or should be as something distinct from what they actually did, and the tendency to treat political and military history on the one hand as something separate from economic and social history on the other. A number of provisos should be made at the outset. The title promises more than the paper can deliver; in particular, more will be said about kings and war than about kings and the economy. The subject is handled at a probably excessive level of generalization and abstraction. I talk about Hellenistic kings in general, but in practice it would obviously be necessary to draw distinctions between different dynasties, different times and places, and individual rulers, and some of those distinctions I shall indicate. Conclusions are provisional and subject to modification and considerable expansion in detail. Finally, two points of terminology. I use the word ‘Hellenistic’ for no better reason than out of the force of acquired habit, but of course the word and the concept are modern inventions that were unknown to the ancient world. (shrink)

Of these lines Markland wrote in 1728 ‘patet ignari cuiusdam et barbari interpolatoris esse’; Dr. Trapp in 1735 found them ‘in themselves flat, and improper, and altogether unworthy of Virgil’; ‘in his ipsis miror qui factum sit ut Viri Doctissimi non agnouerint orationis uim et elegantiam’ ; ‘finding in them … all Virgil's usual ease and suavity … [we] hail those verses with joy, and reinstate them in their rightful … position as the commencing verses of the great Roman epic’ (...) ; ‘uersus praeclarissimos iniuria poeta abiudicauerunt editores plerique’. (shrink)

This article examines closely an important passage at the conclusion of the Mahābhārata wherein the final state of the epic heroes after death is defined. The Critical Edition’s phrasing of what precisely became of the characters once they arrived in heaven is unclear, and manuscript variants offer two apparently contradictory readings. In this article I present evidence in support of one of these readings, and respond to the Mahābhārata ’s seventeenth century commentator Nīlakaṇṭha Caturdhara, who champions the other. Underlying and (...) prompting this debate is a much broader issue of the epic narrative: the complex nature of the Mahābhārata heroes as both agents in a universe governed by karma , and their identities as “portions” of divine figures acting within a broader dramatic structure of eschatological myth. (shrink)

Justice requires that public policy improve the lives of disadvantaged members of society. Dementia is a source of disadvantage, and a growing global public health challenge. This article examines the theoretical and ethical connections between theories of justice and public dementia policy. Disability in general, and dementia in particular, poses important challenges for theories of justice, especially social contract theories. First, the article argues that non-contractarian accounts of justice such as the Capabilities and Disadvantage approaches are better equipped than their (...) contractarian counterparts to analyse issues of justice and dementia. Secondly, using a capabilities framework, I analyse original empirical data from qualitative interviews and discussion groups with health and social care professionals. The article concludes that social connection is a ‘fertile functioning’—a multiplier of advantage that enables people to live well with dementia together—and should therefore be a priority for public dementia policy. (shrink)

The clear affinity between Quintilian's art-criticism and the comparable portions of Pliny's Natural History has often been remarked. Pliny's principal sources for his chapters on art have long been recognized as going back through Varro to the great third-century critics, Xenocrates of Sicyon and Antigonus of Carystus, the latter of whom worked over Xenocrates' treatise and incorporated new material of his own; an earlier Greek source was Duris of Samos, on whom Antigonus drew for the anecdotic element in his tradition. (...) The careful work of many patient scholars has been successful in disentangling to a considerable extent the characteristic contributions of these and other authorities to Pliny's medley of information. On the other hand, Quintilian's incursion into the same field seems never to have been studied independently, but only incidentally to research on the Plinian sources. The purpose of this paper is to examine Quintilian's contribution afresh; my indebtedness to earlier studies, in particular to those of Robert, will be readily apparent. (shrink)

This paper offers a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the common law of property and the rule of law. The standard way of framing this relationship is within the terms of the form/substance debate within the literature on the rule of law: Does the rule of law include only formal and procedural aspects or does it also encompass and support substantive rights such as private property rights and civil liberties? By focusing on the nature of common-law reasoning, (...) I wish to question the form/substance dichotomy that frames this debate and to show that the formal aspects of the rule of law are in fact principles widely adopted within the practice of common-law reasoning and as such play a large role in shaping the substantive content of common-law property rights. Understanding this has implications beyond the relationship between property law and the rule of law. (shrink)

En los territorios pluriétnicos y plurilingüísticos del imperio español, la traducción de las lenguas indígenas al español en contextos legales y burocráticos era común, pero son escasos los estudios del proceso de la traducción y su valor retórico. El Paraguay colonial es un interesante ejemplo, dado el extenso bilingüismo entre muchos españoles criollos y el monolingüismo entre la gran mayoría de los pueblos guaraníes. En este artículo reviso tres tipos de traducción en la región: traducción sin traducción, traducciones sospechosas y (...) una traducción resumida. Cada ejemplo refleja los variados modos de traducción, la política de la traducción, y las formas en que las traducciones pueden complementar un análisis cultural de los guaraníes. Incluyo aquí una traducción original de una carta guaraní del año 1761 del pueblo Nuestra Señora de Fe y un análisis de su traducción resumida. (shrink)

The word ‘tyrant’ was not originally Greek, but borrowed from some eastern language, perhaps in western Asia Minor. On the other hand, tyranny as it developed in the Greek cities in the archaic age would seem to have been initially an indigenous growth, independent of any intervention by foreign powers. It then became a constantly recurring phenomenon of Greek political and social life, so long as the Greeks enjoyed an independent history.

The word ‘tyrant’ was not originally Greek, but borrowed from some eastern language, perhaps in western Asia Minor. On the other hand, tyranny as it developed in the Greek cities in the archaic age would seem to have been initially an indigenous growth, independent of any intervention by foreign powers. It then became a constantly recurring phenomenon of Greek political and social life, so long as the Greeks enjoyed an independent history.

On Aen. 2. 277 DServius notes ‘non sine ratione etiam hoc de crinibus dolet Aeneas, quia illis maxime Hector commendabatur, adeo ut etiam tonsura ab eo nomen acceperit, sicut Graeci poetae docent.’ Fraenkel showed that the reference in Graeci poetae is to Lycophron , the source of the comment being provided by Eustathius 1276. 29, a scholion on Il. 22. 401 f. He adds a caution against supposing that Servius’ source referred not only to Lycophron but also to other Greek (...) poets, ‘e.g. some Attic comedians’. That such allusions were in fact made in Comedy is proved by Pollux. (shrink)

En los territorios pluriétnicos y plurilingüísticos del imperio español, la traducción de las lenguas indígenas al español en contextos legales y burocráticos era común, pero son escasos los estudios del proceso de la traducción y su valor retórico. El Paraguay colonial es un interesante ejemplo, dado el extenso bilingüismo entre muchos españoles criollos y el monolingüismo entre la gran mayoría de los pueblos guaraníes. En este artículo reviso tres tipos de traducción en la región: traducción sin traducción, traducciones sospechosas y (...) una traducción resumida. Cada ejemplo refleja los variados modos de traducción, la política de la traducción, y las formas en que las traducciones pueden complementar un análisis cultural de los guaraníes. Incluyo aquí una traducción original de una carta guaraní del año 1761 del pueblo Nuestra Señora de Fe y un análisis de su traducción resumida. (shrink)

abstract In this paper, I first develop a neo-Aristotelian account of the virtue of magnanimity. I then apply this virtue to ethical issues that arise in sport, and argue that the magnanimous athlete will rightly use sport to foster her own moral development. I also address how the magnanimous athlete responds to the moral challenges present in sport by focusing on the issue of performance-enhancing drugs, and conclude that athletic excellence as it is conventionally understood, without moral excellence, has very (...) little value. (shrink)

In this paper I shall attempt to enter part of the way into the microstructure of the account of truth in the Parmenidean fragment 8, and to reveal that account as a dialectical sequence of affirmation and denial involving various kinds of modal utterance. The sequence will then be put into parallel with the first four hypotheses of the second half of Plato’s Parmenides as well as with Zeno and some of the later tradition.

Alvin Plantinga, in Warranted Christian Belief, offers a model for the rationality of a particular version of Christian theistic belief. After briefly summarizing Plantinga’s model, I argue that there are significant moral difficulties present within it. The Christian believer who gives assent to Plantinga’s model is vulnerable tocharges of irrationality and/or immorality when one considers the role and effects of original sin in the model. Similar difficulties arise when one considers a problem posed by religious pluralism for the model. I (...) consider some possible responses to these difficulties, and conclude that these issues merit more attention than they are given in Warranted Christian Belief. (shrink)