Volume 163, Issue 1

Late archaic lyric poetry tends to obscure all pathetic and tragic elements of Achilles’ destiny present in the Iliad . The offence against his honour, his grief for Patroclus, his yearning for native Phthia, and a painful awareness of being ὠκύμορος (“short-lived”) – none of these themes play a role in the passages of Pindar, Bacchylides or Simonides where Achilles is mentioned. Yet each of these three poets operates differently with regard to the epic source, and it is worth investigating how they do so.

This article is a contribution to our understanding of how Archilochean poetics may be situated in the longer poetic tradition. In examining two fragments that have received little attention, I hope to illustrate how Archilochus’ poetry both engaged with its predecessors and was in turn engaged by its successors. Fragment 222W employs a theme that was perhaps already conventional for Hesiod, in which the incompatibility of the sexes is implicated in the cycle of seasons, an idea that also seems relevant to Archilochus’ quarrel with the daughters of Lycambes. Light is shed on 39W by comparing it to later words for skinning that serve as metaphors for cheating someone, the best known example of which is found in Catullus. In the first fragment the text can be elucidated by a look to Archilochus’ forerunners, and in the second by looking to his heirs.

This paper examines Aristotle’s vocabulary of pain, that is the differences and relations of the concepts of pain expressed by (near-)synonyms in the same semantic field. It investigates what is particularly Aristotelian in the selection of the pain-words in comparison with earlier authors and specifies the special semantic scope of each word-cluster. The result not only aims to pin down the exact way these terms converge with and diverge from each other, but also serves as a basis for further understanding Aristotle’s philosophical conception of pain.

This paper discusses continuity between ancient Pythagoreanism and the pseudo-Pythagorean writings, which began to appear after the end of the Pythagorean school ca. 350 BC. Relying on a combination of temporal, formal and substantial criteria, I divide Pseudopythagorica into three categories: 1) early Hellenistic writings (late fourth – late second centuries BC) ascribed to Pythagoras and his family members; 2) philosophical treatises written mostly, yet not exclusively, in pseudo-Doric from the turn of the first century BC under the names of real or fictional Pythagoreans; 3) writings attributed to Pythagoras and his relatives that continued to appear in the late Hellenistic and Imperial periods. I will argue that all three categories of pseudepigrapha contain astonishingly little that is authentically Pythagorean.

In this paper I analyze the rhetorical function of compositional neologisms in Cercidas’ versification, in order to provide a new semantical and/or syntactical explanation for single words that have not been correctly interpreted before. In particular I analyze the fragments 1.41–50 Lom., 2.25–7 Lom. and 60 Lom., focusing especially on the correct interpretation of τεθνακοχαλκίδης, συοπλουτοσύνη and μεταμελλοδύνη. At the end of the paper, final considerations on the rhetorical function of neologism in Cercidas’ text are offered.

Given Plutarch’s fragmentary piece on Aristophanes and Menander ( Mor . 853A–854D), a piece of Table Talk on almost the same topic ( Mor . 711A–713F) and various attacks on comic poets scattered through the Lives , one might believe that Plutarch is a staid, conservative and humourless author. But several other instances in his writings reveal a playful, facetious, witty and humorous Plutarch. This paper will focus on the Quaestiones Convivales , which bear ample witness to this aspect of Plutarch’s personality and authorial technique. It will examine the ways in which he introduces and describes the various interlocutors, discuss certain comments (or arguments) with which he tries to ridicule his philosophical opponents, notably the Stoics and the Epicureans, try to distinguish the various manifestations of Plutarch’s humour (spontaneous reaction, literary device, pleasantry, witticism, irony) and finally suggest that Plutarch’s stance and attitude towards playfulness, comic situations and laughter may ultimately be affected, at least in part, by his allegiance to Plato.

The reference to the rising and setting of the sun to indicate the unceasing duration of an action becomes a τόπος in Latin poetry from an influential distich of Cinna onwards, which was reworked a number of times in Augustan poetry. As well as Vergil and Horace, who adapt the model to different genres and occasions, the treatment of it by the elegists is interesting, in whom the two terms that define East and West are set in relation to the eternity of poetic renown. This transformation may go back to Gallus, to whom Ovid, above all, makes significant references. The numerous occurrences of the τόπος in different authors and genres make possible interesting comparisons.