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 2001 - 2011 | |
Classical World - Full Table of ContentsVolume 105, Number 1 - 2011 A Quarterly Journal on Antiquity
ARTICLES
George Th. MavrogordatosTwo Puzzles Involving SocratesTwo well-known but puzzling facts from the life of Socrates bring into question either what we know about him or what we know about Athenian democracy---or perhaps both. These facts are (a) his term as a member of the Council (Boule) in 406/5 and (b) his military service as a hoplite. The first puzzle can be solved only in the context of the extraordinary crisis of manpower in Athens in 406. The second can be solved only if we assume that, despite his poverty, Socrates retained his inherited membership in the third-census class of zeugitai.Alan SommersteinHinc Omnis Pendet?This article reconsiders the relationship between Horace's iter Brundisinum (Sat. I.5), Lucilius's iter Siculum (book 3), and Aristophanes' Frogs. It argues that both Horace's poem and Lucilius' are more extensively indebted to Frogs than had previously been recognized; that Horace's claim (Sat. I.4.1-7) that Lucilius was "totally dependent" on Old Comedy has a superficial plausibility if one considers only Lucilius' first three books, though hardly applicable to his whole corpus; and that Horace chose to link Lucilian satura with Old Comedy, rather than with Archilochus and the iambographers, because in his Epodes he was presenting himself as Archilochus' heir. Joseph P. DexterA Nineteenth-Century American Interpretation of the AeneidThis paper examines a loose, popularized translation of Aeneid 1 and 4 published in 1870 by a small New England newspaper. Through evaluation of the translator's preface and related material, I argue that the text was intended to be a response to the marginalization of the classics in school curricula and a useful pedagogical tool for attracting students to Vergil. I then consider the translation in relation to the long tradition of Vergillian travesty and propose that it can be read as a combinatorial parody that satirizes both the original epic and nineteenth-century American society in an attempt to increase interest in the classics.
SPECIAL SECTION ON ANCIENT EDUCATION
David WolfsdorfPlato's Conception of KnowledgePlato's epistemology is closely related to his metaphysics and ethics. The basic reason for this is that Plato thinks that knowledge (έπιστήμη)---in at least one of the senses in which he uses the word---requires explanation. Fully adequate explanation must refer to what is metaphysically primary. The Form of the Good is metaphysically primary. Hence, fully adequate explanation must be teleological. This paper endeavors to clarify these fundamental points through an examination of Plato's treatment of knowledge in three dialogues: Meno, Theatetus, and Republic.Robert J. PenellaThe Progymnasmata in Imperial Greek EducationThe progymnasmata were graded prose compositional exercises, often begun under the grammarian and continued under the sophist or rhetor. They were preliminary to exercises in declamation. This paper examines their content and role in education in the Roman Empire. Considerable attention is paid to their discussion in theoretical treatises, almost entirely in Greek. Appreciation of these modes of discourse is important to the student of antiquity, not only because of their role in education, but also because they continued to surface in the writings of adults into whose heads they had been ingrained during their school days. Amy RichlinOld BoysScholars have explored the wasys in which Roman oratorical training worked to construct masculinity, and vice versa. This essay historicizes Roman oratorical discourse by examining the letters of Cicero, Pliny, Fronto, and Sidonius Apollinaris. A number of Cicero's correspondents are identified as his possible apprentices, with particular attention to a group of letters exhibiting the language of sentimental friendship, and the vocabulary of bonded master/apprentice pairs is compared with the vocabulary of oratorical invective against youthful corruption. At the end of the Republic, I argue, the violence inherent in these eroticized power relations bursts out.
137SPECIAL SECTION ON ANCIENT EDUCATION
W. Martin BloomerQuintilian on the Child as Learning SubjectQuintilian communicates definite ideas about the educability of children. From the perspectives of the history of education and childhood, his innovation is a theory of the child as a learning subject. The child (consistently represented as the male, free puer) has a native mimetic ability lacking judgment but with a natural, almost bodily need for book learning. The teacher (not parent) shapes the child's developing mind just as if he were writing a book from a clean slate. The maturation of the child is imagined not in biological or social terms but as a correlate to the process of writing.Index of Reviews Books Received |
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