Category Archives: Greek Literature

Bacchylidean Meter

Since I’m at the Pindar in Sicily conference right now, I thought I ought to upload my one published paper on Greek lyric, “The Meter of Bacchylides 2 and 6”, published in what was (I think) the very last issue … Continue reading

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A Metrical Joke in ‘Theognis’?

Back to finishing up some long-unfinished papers in my files, I’ve just uploaded a page on two passages of the Theognidea (PDF here).

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Philogelos V (75)

Σχολαστικὸς νοσῶν, εἶτα πεινῶν, ὡς οὐδέπω τετάρτη ὥρα ἀπηγγέλη, ἀπιστῶν πρὸς ἑαυτὸν τὸ ὡρολόγιον ἐκέλευσε κομισθῆναι. A pedant, being sick and then hungry, and suspicious as the fourth hour was never announced, ordered the sundial to be moved into his … Continue reading

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Philogelos IV (256)

Σχολαστικὸς εἰς χειμῶνα ναυαγῶν καὶ τῶν συμπλεόντων ἑκάστου περιπλεκομένου σκεῦος πρὸς τὸ σωθῆναι, ἐκεῖνος μίαν τῶν ἀγκυρῶν περιεπλέξατο. A pedant, as his ship was sinking in a storm and his fellow passengers were each one embracing a piece of tackle … Continue reading

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Philogelos III (25)

Σχολαστικὸς ἐν τῶι πλέειν χειμῶνος ὄντος σφοδροῦ καὶ τῶν οἰκετῶν κλαιόντων· Μὴ κλαίετε, ἔφη· πάντας γὰρ ὑμᾶς ἐν διαθήκαις ἐλευθέρους ἀφῆκα. A pedant on a sea-voyage, when there was a severe storm and his slaves were weeping, said: “Don’t cry: … Continue reading

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Philogelos II (2)

Σχολαστικὸς κολυμβῶν παρὰ μικρὸν ἐπνίγη· ὤμοσε δὲ εἰς ὕδωρ μὴ εἰσελθεῖν, ἐὰν μὴ μάθῃ πρῶτον καλῶς κολυμβᾶν. A pedant nearly drowned while swimming; he swore that he would not go into the water again, if he did not learn first … Continue reading

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Philogelos I (55)

Σχολαστικὸς εὐτράπελος ἀπορῶν δαπανημάτων τὰ βιβλία αὐτοῦ ἐπίπρασκε, καὶ γράφων πρὸς τὸν πατέρα ἔλεγε· Σύγχαιρε ἡμῖν, πάτερ· ἤδη γὰρ ἡμᾶς τὰ βιβλία τρέφει. A witty pedant, in difficulties for money, began to sell his books, and writing to his father … Continue reading

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Why Wasn’t I Told?

I had never seen or heard of the Cambridge Translations from Greek Drama series until I picked up Ajax and Philoctetes at the Green Valley Book Fair on Saturday. They look quite useful for monoglot students of tragedy, and not … Continue reading

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“. . . is often noted”?

“When people unwittingly eat human flesh, served by unscrupulous restaurant owners and other such people, the similarity to pork is often noted.” (Galen, On the Power of Foods 3, quoted in J. C. McKeown, A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities, p. … Continue reading

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Quotation of the Day — and Hebdomad

A boy, an ungrown child, in seven years puts forth     a line of teeth and loses them again; but when another seven God has made complete,     the first signs of maturity appear. In the third hebdomad he’s growing yet, his … Continue reading

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Dubious Historical Claim of the Day

InstaPundit links to a story from the Knoxville News about Tina, a Shire breed horse claimed to be the world’s tallest. The dubious historical claim is half a sentence: “Shires date to the Trojan War . . . .” What … Continue reading

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Worst Classical Typos

Here are my nominations: 1. In a Greek text: In Volume I of R. D. Dawe’s Teubner Sophocles (1975), the first word of Oedipus Tyrannus is misspelled. The fact that it’s a one-letter word is particularly impressive:  τέκνα Κάδμου … Continue reading

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Memorial Day Texts

(This is a rewrite of a previous Memorial Day post.) 1. Simonides’ epitaph on the 300 Spartans who died at Thermopylae: ὦ ξεῖν᾿, ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε     κείμεθα τοῖς κείνων πειθόμενοι νομίμοις. Stranger, tell the Lacedemonians that we lie here, … Continue reading

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More (and Fewer) Forthcoming Texts

Please keep the corrections coming for my ‘Forthcoming Texts’ list. Using your comments and e-mails, I’ve deleted several works and added one or two, but there’s still plenty more I don’t know. For instance, why didn’t anyone tell me that … Continue reading

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Seen In The Periodical Room

In some classical journal — it may have been Mnemosyne — I recently ran across a review of a title guaranteed to confuse just about every non-classicist and some percentage of classicists, too: The Fragments of the Methodists, Volume I. … Continue reading

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Whatever Happened To Siculate Lunate Sigmas?

In the thirty years since I first heard of them, I’ve had the vague impression that siculate lunate sigmas, like adscript iotas for the traditional subscripts and use of capital V and small u for both vowels and consonants in … Continue reading

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Fulke Art I

I’ve been leafing through Fulke Greville’s Caelica, partly as congenial bedtime reading, partly to try to find a favorite passage from years ago. It turns out to be lines 69-74 of poem LXXXIII: The ship of Greece, the streams and … Continue reading

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Tiny Linguistic Puzzle

One of the books in the classics section at U.N.C.’s library is Un Dialogo sul Management. What ancient author and work are the subject of this book? I will leave that as a not-too-difficult puzzle for my readers. Suggestions may … Continue reading

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Macaulay On The Greek Novel

From one of Macaulay’s Calcutta letters: I have at stray hours read Longus’s Romance and Xenophon’s Ephesiaca: and I mean to go through Heliodorus, and Achilles Tatius, in the same way. Longus is prodigiously absurd; but there is often an … Continue reading

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