The remote and inhospitable landscape of Iceland made it a perfect breeding-ground for heroes. The first Norsemen to colonize it in 860 found that the fight for survival demanded high courage and tough self reliance; it also nurtured a stern sense of duty and an uncompromising view of destiny. The Icelandic sagas relate the adventurous lives of individuals and families between 930 and 1030, which began as oral tales but were skilfully documented in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and are (...) now regarded as written literature. (shrink)

The use of a historical example such as Nero as part of an argument defending or condemning the regicides came automatically to literate Europeans of the seventeenth century who, as part of their classical education, were conditioned to use rhetorical devices, including examples and comparisons, when trying to convince readers to accept their arguments. Nero had, since shortly after his death in AD 68, been a favourite example of a tyrant, and for centuries literate Europeans had shared a traditional perception (...) of Nero's iniquitous character and actions. Salmasius, however, referred to Nero as being not simply a tyrant but as �the worst of tyrants�. One of the major objectives of this essay is to demonstrate that this notion of Nero as worse than other tyrants and indeed, with some writers, than other men was widely shared during the Renaissance. Secondly, I will show that it was mainly the personality of Nero and especially his cruelty that was seen as justifying his exceptional status. Thirdly, I hope to explain how he came to have such a reputation and the influence of rhetoric and a related moralizing approach to writing history on establishing and perpetuating it. In accomplishing these three objectives it will also be necessary to elucidate the meaning that the term 'tyrant' had for Europeans of the Renaissance and earlier centuries. As will be shown, the tyrant was very frequently defined in terms of his vicious personality and especially his extreme cruelty. (shrink)

The consuls of 284, according to the Fasti Capitolini, were L. Caecilius Metellus Denter and C. Servilius Tucca. Of Tucca we know nothing else at all, and if the literary sources also tell us that Metellus Denter was defeated and killed by Gauls at Arretium, the date of this setback and Metellus' status at the time have long been matter for dispute. The surviving accounts of Rome's campaigns against the Gauls in this period fall into three categories. First, there is (...) Polybius, who apparently sets Metellus' death in 284 and terms him, prima facie consul. Then there are the sources which seem clearly to derive from a later, annalistic tradition; they describe Metellus as praetor and place his death in 283. And finally there is Appian, whose account represents an attempt to conflate these views and consequently falls between two stools; in his account Metellus is not even mentioned. (shrink)

I : PETRARCH'S BRITAIN 1: Piero Boitani: Petrarch and the barbari Britanni II: PETRARCH AND THE SELF 2: Jennifer Petrie: Petrarch solitarius 3: Zygmunt G. Baranski: The Ethics of Ignorance: Petrarch's Epicurus and Averroes and the Structures of the De Sui Ipsius et Aliorum Ignorantia 4: Jonathan Usher: Petrarch's Second Death III: PETRARCH IN DIALOGUE 5: Francesca Galligan: Poets and Heroes in Petrarch's Africa: Classical and Medieval Sources 6: Enrico Santangelo: Petrarch reading Dante: the Ascent of Mont Ventoux 7: John (...) Took: Petrarch and Cino da Pistoia: A Moment in the Pre-history of the Canzoniere IV: PETRARCHISM AND ANTIPETRARCHISM IN ITALY 8: Abigail Brundin: Petrarch and the Italian Reformation 9: Hilary Gatti: Petrarch, Sidney, Bruno 10: Diego Zancani: Renaissance Misogyny and the Rejection of Petrarch 11: Letizia Panizza: Impersonations of Laura in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Italy V: PETRARCHISM: ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH CONNECTIONS 12: Michael Wyatt: Other Petrarchs in Early Modern England 13: Stephen Clucas: Thomas Watson's Hekatompathia and European Petrarchism 14: John Roe: The Comedy of Astrophil: Petrarchan Motifs in Sidney's Astrophil and Stella 15: Syrithe Pugh: Sidney, Spenser and Political Petrarchism 16: R. D. S. Jack: Petrarch and the Scottish Renaissance Sonnet VI: PETRARCH AND THE MODERNS: ITALY AND BRITAIN 17: Pamela Williams: Leopardi and Petrarch 18: Ela Tandello: Between Tradition and Transgression: Amelia Rosselli's Petrarch 19: Martin McLaughlin: Nineteenth-century British Biographies of Petrarch 20: Peter Hainsworth: Translating Petrarch. (shrink)

Eastern Orthodox theology affirms the liturgy as an anticipatory icon of God's reign that establishes a pattern of relationships by which Christians are called to live in and for the world. Taking at face value an Orthodox theological claim that the liturgy is the sole source for deriving ethical actions, Orthodox theologians typically address the question of female priesthood within the existing visual parameters of the liturgy in which men exercise authority. Given patterns addressed by both aspects of ritual theory (...) and contemporary anthropology, the articulation of anthropologies that likewise limit the authority and capability of women is to be expected. However, these defenses of the exclusion of women from full participation in the liturgy, including sacramental ordination, are the result of a reductionistic view of the priesthood, the liturgy, and human persons. Neither Orthodox personalism, nor its ethical implications, nor a few rarely glimpsed snippets of the Orthodox tradition support such reductionism. Rather, recognition of the unique capabilities of women by the community and their welcome participation within the community encourages the joy that underlies the transformation of a people who live for the life of the world. (shrink)

Late-ancient theologies of the priesthood frame its tasks, virtues and metaphorical relationships around its chief task: encouraging a common life of theosis as embodied virtue. Metaphorical relationships are used to evoke the manner in which, and the virtue with which, priestly tasks are to be practiced. In the priest, we hope to see an icon of the deified humanity to which all are called. This theological structuring allows the participation of women in the sacramental priesthood. Modern Orthodox arguments, in their (...) efforts to defend an exclusively male priesthood, subvert this structure. The language of relationship and virtue is used to define the priesthood according to specifically gendered tasks. This theology results in, and derives from, a reduced view of the full personhood of women and the breadth of the priestly task, undermining the priest’s role of embodying and encouraging all the virtues of the deified life. (shrink)

In his account of Nero's last months Suetonius describes the various ways in which the emperor, after he heard the news that Galba had decided to take on the leadership of Vindex’ revolt, tried to raise troops and to extract money from the inhabitants of Rome. On top of all this, so says the biographer, Nero incurred invidia by profiteering from the high price of grain, and this invidia grew greater because it happened too that while the inhabitants were suffering (...) from hunger, news came that a grain ship from Alexandria had arrived carrying nothing but sand for the court wrestlers . Although this episode undoubtedly belongs in 68, there is little to be said for the argument, now generally accepted, that this shortage of grain was caused by L. Clodius Macer, legionary legate of Africa Proconsularis. As I hope to show, the dearth resulted from Nero's own attempts at self-defence. (shrink)

The contention that the Homeric epics, and perhaps also the Hesiodic poems and the Homeric Hymns, are the products, directly or at a very short remove, of a tradition of orally improvised poetry is widely accepted as a basic premiss in Homeric criticism. The cogency of the argument depends on the frequency and characteristic use of formulae in the early hexameter poetry, and their rarity in the literature of Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman times, which is known or assumed to have (...) been composed in the study. The reasoning appears to me valid, but in some respects overstated or ambiguously stated in recent publications, and the first fault arises out of the second. (shrink)

This Very Short Introduction examines all the major aspects of Dante's work, emphasizing the features that have made him such an important point of reference for modern writers and their readers. Exploring and explaining The Divine Comedy, they also discuss his life and poetry as well as issues of truth, humanity, politics, and religion.

Homer is universally praised for the clarity of his style. Yet even to sympathetic or perceptive readers, if their critical remarks really express their judgments, his poetical intention has been singularly opaque: invited to leave town by Plato, as if he were a bad ethical philosopher; lauded by Aristotle for his dramatic unity, as if he were a pupil of Sophocles; criticised by Longinus for composing an Odyssey without Iliadic sublimity; abused in more recent times by Scaliger as indecorous, irrational, (...) improper and undisciplined, as if he were seeking to portray the perfect exemplar of a renaissance prince; defended by Dacier as a sublime primitive, innocent of taste and art, who achieved perfection ‘par la seule force de son genie’. Some of these judgments are no more than the stock responses of their age to epic poetry. The critic regards the poems from his own point of view; he discovers what he expects to find; and he passes a judgment that illuminates the workings of his own mind but sheds nothing but darkness upon Homer's. The announcement, therefore, of a new criticism by Notopoulos and Lord, a criticism based on the results of comparative study and free from the old prejudices of Analysts and Unitarians, is an event of importance. It may even be the case that the despised anachronistic ‘singer’, that unwashed, mendicant figure lurking in the coffee houses of the Balkans, has something to say. But whatever he says, it will be applicable to Homer only by analogy, and will require verification. (shrink)