This article addresses the question of how the prestigious city of Athens, so central in the literary movement of the Second Sophistic, was represented in Claudius Aelianus’ miscellaneous compilations. These texts are the product of his readings and demonstrate the choices he made when selecting those facts that he thought worth remembering from the sources of which he made use. Therefore, the image of Athens reconstructed through the analysis presented in this article demonstrates how Aelianus refers to some well-chosen aspects of the city’s past and communicates them to his readers while reforming a specific image of the city. Indeed, the emphasis he uses when resorting to the use of literary practices, such as selection or collecting information, illustrates the cultural values of his time, characterized by a predilection for classical Athens.
The paper focuses on the peculiar status authors of miscellaneous compilations from Roman imperial times have. On the one hand, they seem to be mere collectors of pieces of knowledge written down by former scholars. On the other, however, they also highlight their own creative approach in the compilation process. This attitude becomes visible in the way they present their collections to their intended readers, most of the time in the introductory or conclusive remarks they provide. Our analysis will deal with these paratextual frameworks and compare the images the compilers used to describe their activities, so that our study will demonstrate how they understood their contributions and how they wanted them to be appreciated by their readers.
Justine Diemke, Nadine Leisner and Alexandra Trachsel present three examples of e-Learning from the Hamburg Open Online University (HOOU). Each Classics department has developed multimedia applications and playful learning scenarios like quizzes: the eManual of Ancient History, the online presence Ariadne which provides basic archaeological information about the ancient Mediterranean, and Antike Heute in Hamburg, an online quiz focusing on Greco-Roman mythology.
Abstract The study pursues two aims. The first part is dedicated to the deciphering and editing of a new text preserved as palimpsest on a parchment bifolio. It belongs to a small collection of documents from the Cairo Genizah owned by the University of Geneva. The fragment reveals an extract from an early version of a Passion of St Plato of Ancyra, a saint who is best known through Byzantine menologia. His Passion was also reworked by Symeon Metaphrastes in the 10th century. However, the new text is closest to an anonymous pre-metaphrastic version available in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca. The second aim of the paper (developed in Part 2) is, therefore, to establish the relation between different versions of the Passion and locate the new witness from the Cairo Genizah in the history of the transmission of this text.
divisions and capitula in the Le Preux edition of 1591, I learned to my own embarrassment of a third set of chapter divisions and headings in the 1611 edition of Gruter. Works that are not specifically about Ammianus are the other area where selectivity might be expected, but here too J. is catholic in his approach. The inclusion of historical works that discuss Ammianus’ period is commendably broad. I can point to two general works on Latin textual criticism containing significant discussion of Ammianus’ transmission that are omitted: G. Pasquali, Storia della tradizione e critica del testo (1934, with many reprints) and J. Češka, Textová kritika ve filologické praxi (1973). Having pedantically pointed out the latter omission, it is only fair to emphasise that, as far as I can judge, J. seems to have done an outstanding job at identifying and including material in Slavic languages. I could at this point list other arguable omissions and typos and offer corrections on points of detail; but such a list would be strikingly short and trivial for a work of 650 pages, and it would risk misrepresenting J.’s admirable diligence and dedication and real success. Speaking as somebody who has been working on this author from a literary, historical and textual approach for more than 20 years, I was introduced to a daunting number of works unknown to me by this book. For those working consistently on Ammianus or those dipping in to check for a detail, this is a remarkably useful resource.
VARIATIONS OF THE TROJAN MYTH - (G.) Brescia, (M.) Lentano, (G.) Scafoglio, (V.) Zanusso (edd.) Revival and Revision of the Trojan Myth. Studies on Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius. (Spudasmata 177.) Pp. 398. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2018. Paper, €74. ISBN: 978-3-487-15681-1. - Volume 70 Issue 1
In analysing Strabo's use of the Homeric commentators, this chapter touches on the vast topic of Strabo's sources. The chapter defines as "Homeric commentators" five scholars who are known mainly for having worked on the Homeric text, namely Aristarchus of Samothrace, Crates of Mallos, Apollodorus of Athens, Demetrios of Scepsis, and Zenodotus. The Homeric scholars are linked to several specific discussions within the Geography: Homer's geographical knowledge, controversies over the Homeric text, localisation and description of Homeric place names, and non-Homeric themes. In Book 3, Strabo returns to the controversy over Homer's geographical knowledge, while discussing the surroundings of the Spanish city Abdera and mentioning Crates' position as to the so-called exoceanism of Odysseus' journey. The textual issues for which the Homeric commentators are most frequently cited concern either the Catalogue of Ships or its counterpart, the Catalogue of Trojans. The chapter considers topics in which Strabo had a clear personal involvement.
les pas de Georges Dumézil . . . .
In this paper, we shall present some reflections on issues that arise when scholars prepare new editions of fragmentarily preserved works from antiquity. Our focus will be on those fragments that are transmitted as quotations in other extant texts from antiquity. In such cases, the textual sequences considered as fragments have to be dealt with in a particular way, as they are the results of several selection processes that have not been taken into account adequately previously. A digital approach provides better means to represent this special form of fragments, so that the complexity of the transmission of these pieces of evidence can be understood more accurately.
ERATOSTHENES - (J.) Pàmias I Massana (ed.), (A.) Zucker (trans.) Ératosthène de Cyrène: Catastérismes. (Collection des Universités de France publiée sous le patronage de l'Association Guillaume Budé 497.) Pp. cxxii + 423. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2013. Paper, €75. ISBN: 978-2-251-00582-9. - Volume 64 Issue 2
