This book is a collection of essays on the Parallel Lives of the Greek philosopher and biographer Plutarch which examines the moral issues Plutarch recognized behind political leadership, and places his writings in their political and social context of the reigns of the Flavian emperors and their successors.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Historical Commentary on Arrian’s History of Alexander. Vol. II. Commentary on Books IV–VPhilip A. StadterBosworth, A. B. A Historical Commentary on Arrian’s History of Alexander. Vol. II. Commentary on Books IV–V. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.In books 1–3, Arrian’s Alexander rushed from the Hellespont to Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis. In books IV and V the story changes: Alexander finds himself on the frontier, and beyond. No longer is (...) he confronting the enormous armies of the Persian king in set battles, but pushing beyond the frontiers of empire, seizing impregnable heights, and most important, struggling with his own Macedonians while defining himself.Bosworth, continuing his commentary after a fifteen-year interval, brings an exceptional background of historical, source critical, and literary studies. B. notes that his evaluation is “perhaps more sympathetic” than in his first volume, in part because the quality of the work “improves as it progresses” (v). The thoroughness [End Page 140] of the discussion (360 pages on the two books) is justified by the importance and complexity of the material. The reader is well served by an excellent subject index, a Greek index, ten maps, and four figures. An appendix on Nearchus suggests that that author may have reported much more than the journey from the Indus to the Persian Gulf found in the Indike, and may be a significant source for Arrian in the last four books of the Alexander history. Like the first volume, the commentary has Greek lemmata, translated only when there is a specific difficulty, but even Greekless readers can use it with the help of Brunt’s new Loeb text.Although the commentary deals frequently with textual questions, it focuses on elucidating the historical, geographical, stylistic, and interpretative problems of the text. B. ably notes the constant verbal reminiscences of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, especially in the more elaborate passages, e.g., the speeches at the Hyphasis. Still more are undoubtedly to be found, such as the echo of Thucydides (1.110.1, 3.112.8, 87.87.6) in 5.27.6, ¹l¼goi ¨k poll©n. His elucidation of Arrian’s use of Megasthenes, Nearchus, and Eratosthenes in the digressions at the beginning of book 5 is a model of clarity and precision. Here as elsewhere he stresses Arrian’s purposeful blending of his sources: e.g., on 5.6.3–8: “It is an elaborately contrived passage, and the source material is carefully selected to fit the scheme of the argument. Arrian is not merely rewriting a passage of Eratosthenes.” Throughout, his comments on sources are precise and thoughtful.B.’s notes follow wherever the text leads, but he devotes special attention to the major focuses of Arrian’s attention: the great digression on Alexander’s orientalism, the murder of Cleitus, proskunesis, and the page’s conspiracy (4.7.4–14.4 5 45–101), the march to the Indus, with the siege of Massaga and the capture of Aornus (4.22.3–30.9 5 141–96), the series of digressions which begin book 5, (5.1.1–8.1 5 197–259), the battle on the Hydaspes against Porus (5.8.4–19.4 5 262–311), and the mutiny on the Hyphasis (5.24.8–29.5 5 337–60).Bosworth’s commentary on book 5 encompasses the multiple levels of the narrative: the reworking of Eratosthenes, Megasthenes, and Nearchus in the preliminary section; the topographical and tactical problems of the battle with Porus, and the rhetorical and stylistic subtleties of the debate at the Hyphasis. Throughout the book, Arrian shows Alexander going beyond his predecessors. By crossing the Indus he passes the limits of the Persian Empire. At Nysa he surpasses the mythical conquests of Dionysus (5.2.1). The digression on the Indus bridges recalls the bridges (and defeats) of Xerxes and Darius, as well as Roman imperial engineering (5.7.1–2). The crossing of the Hydaspes and great battle contrast with Cyrus’ disastrous battle with the Massagetae in Herodotus 1.204–14 (cf. 5.4.5). The description of the river systems of the Punjab (5.4.1–2) evokes Herodotus’ account... (shrink)

In the introductory remarks to his Mulierum Virtutes, Plutarch notes the value of comparisons for establishing the diverse manifestations of the same virtue: ‘Achilles was brave in one way, Ajax in another; and the intelligence of Odysseus differed from that of Nestor, nor were Cato and Agesilaus just in the same way, nor was Irene loving of her husband () as Alcestis was, nor Cornelia high-minded in the manner of Olympias’. All the examples are well known, and quite apposite, except (...) for Irene (). Who is this paragon of wifely love? A search through encyclopedias and mythological handbooks proves fruitless. Wyttenbach in his note ad loc. suggested the courtesan friend of a minor Ptolemy killed at Ephesus, yet this extremely obscure figure hardly merits mention in the same breath with Alcestis. The name must be corrupt. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Brief Mention The Classicist’s ThirstP. A. S.( Od.11.582–92)These are some of the first lines I read of Greek poetry, thanks to Schoder’s Homeric Greek,and they are part of the reason I became a classicist. Their simplicity, directness, and clear statement of a man’s desperate longing for what is necessary and beautiful stirred my unformed youth and incited me to master as best I could this delightful impossible language. Forever (...) eager, forever denied, Tantalus now strikes me as the image of the scholar always hoping to reach and make his own the truth, always finding it receding from his lips, or scribbling pen.In each century, ever since Petrarch rediscovered Cicero’s letters and Livy’s decades and thought he had found kindred spirits, with whom he could converse directly over the ages, scholars have sought for methods of establishing a closer tie to the classical past and modes of relating it to their own world. Every century has built on what has gone before, while criticizing previous work as inadequate or wrongheaded. Petrarch began the search for manuscripts, reassembling the decades of Livy, and inspiring Boccaccio and later humanists in a chase for treasures that continued into the sixteenth century. But bare manuscripts were not enough: soon the need for a renewed study of grammar and diction became apparent, for the collation and emendation of texts, for translation into the vernacular.Let Poliziano stand for many: he brought to the work of emendation and interpretation of classical Latin texts a knowledge of Greek remarkable in his day, a precise familiarity with a wide range of authors and their commentators, and the technique of evaluating manuscripts by [End Page 143]their age. He would hunt out and note the readings of the earliest codices available—he found many in Florence, assembled by previous scholars—and emend the vulgate tradition, often using Greek texts to correct the Latin. With these tools he was able to make an outstanding contribution to the text and interpretation of authors. Each short essay of the Miscellaneorum centuria primaand the unfinished Centuria secundais cut like a small jewel, the ingenuity and insight of each facet flashing the brilliance of his method. How often he seems to have escaped Tantalus’ fate, and sipped the water, tasted that delicious fruit.Yet important as his work was, at a distance of time the elusive truth recedes, and must be sought all over again. The oldest manuscripts are not necessarily the best, stemmata can play strange tricks, contamination can confuse traditions, anonymous correctors are revealed as identifiable scholars. Methods are refined, new techniques tried, terminology clarified. Now Poliziano’s marvelous command of the Latin vocabulary is available to the undergraduate who troubles to do a word search on the PHI CD-ROM, though not with the linguistic skill or knowledge of context to use it well. Microfilm, copying machines, and air travel allow inspection of manuscripts scattered throughout the world. Students use texts annotated with the learning of five hundred years, and have at their fingertips information even a Poliziano could not know. Yet somehow our thirst is still there, our hunger not satisfied. The sense of the texts, the events and emotions of history, the culture of which they are a part, their meaning to our own lives, are still elusive.Poliziano’s methods have not relieved our thirst, nor have those of Bentley or Mommsen, of Wilamowitz or Gildersleeve, though they have brought us closer to understanding the ancient texts and the world that created them, and have given us a taste of that world, those people. Their work has brought us where we are today. The Estienne motto, found on the cover of the summer issues of the Journal,is apposite: Noli altum sapere. 1Some of the old limbs that did not bear fruit are pruned away and new ones grafted on, but the new depend on the vigor of the old trunk.Each scholar, each generation of scholars, is condemned—or privileged—to repeat the experience of searching for a better method of understanding, of stretching once more toward the receding water.This Journalhas... (shrink)

Stephanie West suggested in a note in this journal , 280) that the presence of an anecdote in Lodovico Guicciardini's sixteenth-century L'Hore di Ricreatione furnishes a parallel for the fable alluded to by Horace, Ep. 1.2.42–3: ‘Rusticus exspectat dum defluat amnis: at ille / labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.’ The parallels, and a third from nineteenth-century Sicily, allow her to imagine a tale, ‘part of Italian traditional lore’, already extant in Horace's time and presumably transmitted in rural regions (...) down to Guicciardini and the Sicilian story-teller. (shrink)