Euphrosyne

This comment to the famous Dodwell Vase, an archaic Corinthian pyxis representing two figures bearing heroic names (Agamemnon and Thersander), proposes that the composition establishes a link between two archaic epic cycles: Troy and Thebes. In this essay, we will present a concise story of the discovery of the vessel, introduce the main questions surrounding the piece, and offer a reading of the scenes and inscriptions on the vase. This proposal analyses the figures in light of their mythographic and literary traditions, and hypothesises on the painter’s intention to depict the two heroes, together with other figures and two interconnected scenes, taking into consideration the development of archaic epic cycles.

The Doric dialects display several special features regarding the vocalism which distinguish them from the other Greek dialects. One of these differences consists in the result of the contraction of /a/+/e/: Long open /εː/ in Doric in contrast with long /aː/ in Attic-Ionic. Nonetheless, several forms of the word ἆθλον / ἄεθλον in some Doric dialects do display an apparently unlikely Dorian contraction to /aː/. Thus, after a brief explanation about the development of hiatus and vowel contractions in Greek, we shall analyse the evidences for the contraction for the /awe/ sequence in Doric, specially concerning the term ἆθλον, in order to establish the development of the /a/+/e/ hiatus and the nature of the contraction of this word.

When, in ancient Greece, monuments that confirm the presence of sacred areas are not preserved, it is difficult to differentiate these sacred zones from those that were not. However, epigraphic texts sometimes offer valuable information on this point. This paper studies five inscriptions that delimit sacred areas of the god Dionysus in the Boeotian region: four of them come from the city of Thespiae, and one, from Thebes. In addition to the analysis of the texts themselves, the paper delves into certain historical events that influenced this region.

In Ar. V. 957, Philocleon asks “What is the profit …?” (τί οὖν ὄφελος …;) and Bdelicleon repeats “What is it?” (ὅ τι;) before providing him with an answer. This is a type of echo question, namely an indirect echo question. A distinction is made between simple echo questions (as “ὅ τι;” above) and over-echoic questions, as in ὅστις εἴμ’ ἐγώ; in reply to σὺ δ’ εἶ τίς ἀνδρῶν; (Av. 997, bis). We describe the sequences to which the indirect echo questions belong according to the type of questions to which they reply, whether they are uttered in response to specifying or polar questions, whether these questions are rhetorical or true information-seeking questions. Indirect echo questions problematise the relevance of the question that is echoed, either because the answer is considered obvious or because the question is deemed absurd. They are marked answers to specifying questions, which in most cases are information-seeking questions. In replies to rhetorical questions, over-echoic questions are preferred.

It has been traditionally thought that there were no figures of Christ in the first centuries due to the Christian prohibition of worshiping statues. However, certain texts contain information about the extension of this pagan cult practice also to this area. Both pagans and Christians were provided at particular times with this type of images to worship their represented deity, which supposes a continuity in the Roman religious beliefs.

We’ll examine the many light-images within Statius’ Silvae (with particular attention to 1.2) which take on a not only denotative but also connotative value. They move from the description of luxurious residences, gleaming with precious materials, to the characterization of their owners whose interior splendour imparts luster to a patent but not ostentatious luxury, deprived in this way of any trace of vulgarity. This light reverberates also onto the poet who at the same time gives and receives shine as he sings so much splendour.

This paper is focused on the building of both personal and social identities especially between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. The starting point is Aristotelian philosophy, in which human being is defined as a speaking animal living in community. In this context, literature become a privileged expression of the relationship between the self and the other. Hence, this work shows that sociological and pragmatic analysis of Renaissance letters might contribute to a better knowledge of those coordinates that gave birth to modern conception of human being. The research on the changing uses of letter-writing could shed light on this ideological process and simultaneously clarify the way in which this same process influenced literature. The novel emerged from that intersection as shown by a masterpiece like Don Quixote.

This article aims to analyze the correspondence of the humanist Cristobal Escobar, a Nebrija’s pupil, who spread the teachings of his mentor in Sicily through a group of literary works. The letters are deployed in all his printed editions and they are essentially a sort of dedications that present either a volume as a whole or a brochure in particular. In these letters Escobar talks about both some important aspects of his life and his services in the Sicilian court that represent his first steps in the island, and also his controversies with other humanists, but, at the same time, he reveals the cultural background where he moved his steps, and the gestation of his works.

This study brings together a set of arguments in favour of the attribution of the sentimental novel Naseo e Amperadonia to the poet of the Cancioneiro Geral Luís da Silveira (1483-1534), guarda-mor of prince D. João and future king D. João III, Count of Sortelha, among other titles. This authorship emerges in a copy discovered by H. Sharrer in the Ajuda Library (Ms. 51-VI- 38). The novel had hitherto been considered anonymous and was known only from a copy preserved in a miscellaneous codex so-called “Asensio’s manuscript”. The analysis of the two versions leads us to the conclusion that the Ajuda copy, although made at a later period than Asensio’s copy, conveys an earlier stage of the novel. In the Asensio’s manuscript, the author’s name and the name of the main addressee ( João Rodrigues de Sá de Meneses) were removed; the happy ending to the love story was also amputated. In addition, there are other kind of interventions aimed at stylistic purification in relation to the stage of the text offered in the Ajuda copy. These pages also propose new arguments about the location of the action in the Turkish East in the light of Manueline war campaigns in the East at the time of Silveira, as well as presenting other significant concomitances between the novel and the compositions published in the Cancioneiro Geral by Silveira and his main interlocutor João Rodríguez de Meneses.

Miguel Venegas, a Jesuit Rhetoric professor born in Ávila (1529), was one of the most prolific Spanish poets, but one of the least known at the same time. Although there are significant studies about his dramatic plays, a good part of his work still remains unknown. His tragedies are just one of the varied poetic genres among which Venegas stood out, being elegiac poetry another important facet of his fruitful literary production. In order to improve our knowledge about it, in this article we offer a critical edition, translation and analysis of a genethliacon composed on the occasion of the birth of prince Fernando (1571), Philip II’s son, paying special attention to the classical sources and some eventual innovative elements.

This paper reports on a manuscript by the Portuguese scholar Francisco Botelho de Moraes e Vasconcelos (1670-1747). In the form of an extensive epistle, dated June 1703, it constitutes a true Ars poetica, in the manner of the well-known Greek and Latin models. This text, that had never been transcribed or studied before, focuses mainly on the epic genre and the principles to be applied to the composition of epic poems. Its content is analyzed here in the light of the classical sources that support and underpin it.

This article is about the world of written culture, books and reading. Its main objective is to verify the survival in time of the ancient authors and the reading formation that existed at a given moment. This subject is especially studied in the epigrams written in Latin by the enlightened and humanist Juan de Iriarte. Finally, it is emphasized that the Latin poet Martial had an influence on the subject matter and realization of the epigrams studied.

After the arrival of De Navarrete’s Tratados historicos, […] in Macau in 1680, a series of refutations were written, e.g. by Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-1688), who countered the statement that the Qing Emperor was perceived by the Chinese as an “invader”, and as an invader had not the right to be baptized. In April 1684 an anonymous Jesuit in Macau resumed this point, in a manuscript now in Antwerp: the attack on the “legitimacy” of the Manchu Emperor and the “canonical” question whether the Emperor - and his Court - could by any means ever be baptized, unless after the abdication, touched the heart of the Jesuit “topdown” mission in China. Relying on a strong “bookish” apparatus of European canonical sources he demonstrates that the Manchu “conqueror” was a legitimate “possessor” of China, saving by this the canonic basis for his - expected - baptism and the Jesuit strategy.

This paper focuses on a number of Greeks volumes belonging to the National Library of Spain. Firstly, I discuss the contents and dating of Aelius Aristeides’ manuscript Matr. 4584. Secondly, I offer a relation of the six Byzantine bindings kept in this library. Thirdly, I present the finding of a printed book that belonged to the private library of jurist and hellenist Diego de Covarrubias.

Textual problems in three passages of De Rerum Natura III (lines 58, 894 and 993) are examined and new conjectural emendations are proposed.

The echo is a fundamental feature of Virgilian bucolic poetry, but its treatment in some passages of ecl. 6 and 10 is noteworthy: since in these eclogues a large space is given to the figure (and probably the poetry) of Cornelius Gallus, it is possible to argue that the echo was a theme in his poetry, and that Virgil is alluding to specific passages of it. A confirm seems to come from Prop. 1.18 and 1.20, in which the treatment of the theme has resemblances with Virgil’s eclogues.

This paper verifies the connotations of the term ἀλιτήριος in Flavius Josephus’ Bellum Judaicum, given its unusual occurrence compared with other authors and its inherent semantic complexity. The article provides an analysis of the concerned contexts and summarizes the meaning and functionality of the term in BJ. The adjective is linked with the rhetoric potential that irreligious vocabulary offers to the author as well as with the classical models that inform his literary code.

Ms. 220 from Charleville-Mézières features, after the Sermones by Peter Chrysologus, a text under the title De septem miraculis manufactis. This minor work is usually attributed to Saint Bede - even though his authorship is highly disputed - and constitutes one of the many texts that deals with the genre of Mirabilia. H. Omont consulted the text of the manuscript in 1888 for his critical edition of the Mirabilia texts; however, Omont did not realize that ms. 220 from Charleville-Mézières deviates significantly from Ps. Bede’s version, even as it resembles the Bestiary of Westminster (thirteenth century). This paper analyses the manuscript and presents a critical edition (with complete translation) in order to prove that the ms. shows a connection with the Bestiary, so much so that both texts are filiated.

Matar Saudades, a film by director Fernando Lopes, was released in 1988. The film is a production inscribed in contemporary Portuguese cinema (Cinema Novo), after April 25th 1974, and the plot brings to memory the experience of the colonial period. The plot revolves around Abel, emigrant in France and a man marked by the Colonial War. After a period emigrated, Abel returns to his village, in Valpaços region, in northern Portugal. In his homeland many things seem to have changed. Teresa, the woman Abel has left behind, is now about to join another man, being harassed by a series of suitors, whom Abel will do everything to eliminate. With a screenplay by Fernando Lopes, Carlos Saboga and António-Pedro Vasconcelos, the basic story of this Matar Saudades is undoubtedly the Homeric Odyssey, now contextualized in twentieth century Portugal. Thus, in addition to the treatment of themes dear to national cinema, such as nostalgia of the past and the difficulty in dealing with the inevitable change and transformation that gives rise to the present, Matar Saudades is also one of the few examples of Portuguese cinema in which inspiration of classic themes is present. Fernando Lopes’ film must thus be recognized a prominent place alongside other Portuguese film productions whose plot is based on themes from Classical Antiquity. Among these, those of João Canijo stand out. However, if Canijo’s films are mainly guided by Attic tragedy, Lopes’ is essentially based on Homeric epic.