Lampas - Volume 51, Issue 2, 2018

The function of the augment in Homer is a widely discussed issue in Greek linguistics. The traditional view that the Homeric augment is a temporal marker, just like in Classical Greek, has been questioned during the last decades. This article first summarizes the most relevant observations that have been made and evaluates their strengths and weaknesses. First of all, the high frequency of the augment on the aorist in gnomes and similes, but also when the current result of a past action is highlighted, suggests that the augment does not refer to a past event. The type of discourse, moreover, correlates with the frequency of the augment: it is used relatively often in similes and character speech, but not in narrative. This is why the function of the augment has in recent years been interpreted as deictic (Bakker) or pragmatic (Mumm). In our view, metrical considerations and morphological restrictions influence the use of the augment rather heavily, but if that is taken into consideration, a pragmatic function of the augment seems plausible. We illustrate these points and the remaining problems by discussing augment use in three passages from the Iliad.

Nedum is comparable to English let alone, German geschweige (denn) and Dutch laat staan (dat). Like these modern counterparts it can be paraphrased with ‘much more’ or ‘much less’, depending on the context. If nedum introduces a clause, it can always be paraphrased with ‘much less’. If it introduces only part of a clause and does not have an inflected verb in its scope, the paraphrase depends on the previous clause. If this previous clause contains a semantic negation, nedum can be paraphrased with ‘much less’, if it contains a lexical or pragmatic negation or no negation at all, nedum can be paraphrased with ‘much more’.

The death of Priam by the hands of Achilles’ son Neoptolemus (Pyrrhus) is a popular episode in the Trojan tradition. Quintus of Smyrna’s version invites a creative dialogue with Vergil’s (Latin) Aeneid and Triphiodorus’ (Greek) Sack of Ilion. All of these texts look back on Iliad 24 from varying perspectives, creating a complex interplay which Quintus thematizes in book 13 of his Greek epic sequel to Homer (Posthomerica, third century AD). A diptych of two scenes, in which old men are killed by Greek heroes, serves to juxtapose two possible interpretations of this situation – one underlining the cruelty of the sack of Troy, the other bewailing the misery of a long life – and presents the reader with a moral dilemma. Heroic ideology and the tragedy of mortality clash on a level more explicit than in the Iliad. Quintus’ choices on an intertextual level thus enhance the overall narrative agenda of his own epic, on an intratextual level. This episode broaches a wide scope of narrative reflections, including the complex interaction of literary sources (mainly Homer reception), narrative composition and characterization, and themes such as heroism and pathos in war literature.

This article discusses a unique chapter of the classical tradition: the multilingual reception of the Organon of Aristotle during the early Middle Ages. In doing so, it fills two scholarly gaps. First, it focuses attention on the early Middle Ages as a crucial but neglected phase of the classical tradition, when ancient texts were studied in Latin, Greek and Arabic. Secondly, it elucidates the special case of the simultaneous reception of the Organon in these three language realms. In the eighth and ninth century, intellectuals living in cities as far apart as Aachen and Baghdad studied the Organon at the same time in Latin and Arabic, while in Constantinople it was read in the original Greek. No other classical text was read by such a geographically widespread audience. This article aims to explain how a classical corpus that is now only studied by specialists gained such popularity in both Europe and the Middle East.

In this article I discuss recent trends and publications on Ovidian scholarship, focussing on Heroides 16 and 17, Metamorphoses 1.452-567, 3.131-252 and 8.611-724, and Tristia 4.10. These texts cross borders between elegy and epic. I argue that they can be seen as examples of Ovid as a versatile poet, who plays games with his predecessors, characters, readers, and himself.