Cithara

Schematic of a cithara.

Another donkey item (often that means I’m actually preparing something else, a large item, in the background, which I am): the article Cithara from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Now one can reasonably wonder why on earth put a bland article from a 98-year-old encyclopedia, commonly accessible in libraries thruout the world; and sure enough, from time to time I get some acid-penned e-mail to that effect. And that article is available elsewhere online: in one place, scanned and unproofread, with none of its 6 woodcuts; in another, as a photocopy, the citations unlinked, and itself unlinkable. OK well maybe Wikipedia’s article now supersedes it, since they often start by grabbing the 1911 (about which Wikipedians by and large have nothing good to say), then improve or degrade it, as the mood strikes ’em over there — mostly the latter, as in this case: the article Cithara at Wickedpedia has been dumbed down, has seen some errors introduced, and is next to worthless. But what of “my” own Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities? Well, what of it indeed: no separate article, the cithara covered mixed in with the lyre, really a different instrument, and in an unsatisfactory and confusing way: Smith’s is often not as good as it could be, its writers being classicists and not technical experts in the topic in question. So — now at least there’s a basic article on the instrument out there, written by a historian of musical instruments, and properly done.

Finishing things, sort of

Plutarch, bust from the museum of Delphi.

When I was a kid I collected stamps. Back in those days, it was still not so far in the past that many countries issued stamps in “series” — a set of stamps with a single design, but each denomination in a different color. The stamp collector was thus very often enticed into trying to get the whole series, an amusing and harmless semi-competitive endeavor.

Well, this compulsive trait has surfaced again from my childhood. I originally had no intention of putting all of Plutarch online, many of his works being concerned with philosophy and Greek stuff, and I’m not fond of either. But little by little — at Attalus there is a page entitled “Plutarch: Moralia — list of translations”; and if anyone out there has been wondering why certain Plutarch items have been going up at Lacus rather than others, it goes far to explain it. I’m filling in the blanks, starting by and large with those texts that don’t appear to be online anywhere at all; and when I’m done with those, I’ll probably wind up by putting up the others as well … to “complete the series”. Right now, in addition to the Lives (complete), Lacus has just short of 30% of the Moralia.

Today’s item is an exception, though, since already up elsewhere, but it was short: On Envy and Hate (envy rather than hate, in fact) with Philippe Remacle’s Greek and French linked, as before. It’s a bland little essay, tells us a bit about envy, but not what to do about it; reminds me of the oft-told story, with various famous American divines in the title rôle, of the preacher who gave a two-hour sermon on Sin: when a parishioner was asked by an absent friend what he’d said, the reply — “He was against it.”

More Plutarch

Plutarch, bust from the museum of Delphi.

And there’s more from Plutarch‘s Moralia to announce. Today’s addition:

• Summary of a Comparison between Aristophanes and Menander / Συγκρίσεως Ἀριστοφάνους καὶ Μενάνδρου ἐπιτομή

There’s also a brief piece on Patrimi and Matrimi from Smith’ Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. It may not be the most important essay ever put online, but take a close look and you see why the internet can be relevant and why PDF-scans of ancient books are of less use than html-webpages: the article contains fifteen references to sources and secondary literature, and eight of them are accessible through hyperlink.

Oh, what a difference 40 years makes….

Plutarch, bust from the museum of Delphi.

Plutarch, or at least the body of work transmitted to us under his name, covers a multitude of sins.

Some of these works are so fragmentary as to be next to nothing; some very few are so bizarre or so inept that they cannot possibly be by him (unless they’re impish self-parodies); some seem to be his own working notes or collections extracted from him by others; some are abstruse Gnostic-like disquisitions on the slenderest of topics, the kind of thing that gives philosophy a bad name; finally, many are banal and derivative; and many, and not just either the longest and the best-known, are marked by warmth, humanity, psychological insight, humor, and outright genius: the Plutarch of Montaigne and Shakespeare.

I’ve just put online two of these unpredictable critters — as it turns out, one each of the last two types mentioned; amazing they should be by the same man, but to me, at least, they both bear the unmistakable imprint of Plutarch: the first, the dull one, On the Love of Wealth (De cupiditate); the other, Should Old Men Take Part in Affairs of State? (An seni respublica gerenda sit). The “only” thing that separates them is forty years or so of living; the latter is clearly addressed by one old man to another he has known for many years — “neither of us shall desert the long companionship in the journey which we have thus far made together” — this one sentiment and the gracious expression of it sufficient to place the essay in a class of its own; the other essay, so the Loeb editor tells us, is characterized by youthful “exuberance and fancifulness of diction”: but we need not be proficient in ancient Greek prose style to recognize it clearly as the work of a very young man, just by its inadequate and regurgitative treatment of the subject.

I feel privileged to see the beginning and end of such a man’s life, and as it were share in his journey; would we all did so well in the business and art of being human.

No Greek onsite for either one, since Philippe Remacle has the Greek original of both on his site; I was off the hook easily: you will find links to him on each of my pages, under the Greek and French flags of course.

New Online Journals

Maybe these French journals were already available online for some time, but I learned about it today:

• Annales (the famous journal that once rejuvenated the study of history)
• Archives des Sciences Sociales des Religions
• Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique
• Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
• Dialogues d’histoire ancienne
• Mélanges de l’école française de Rome
• Paléorient
• Revue archéologique de Picardie (hint: search for “Bavay”)
• Revue Numismatique
• Syria. Archéologie, Art et histoire

And there’s a lot more (but unrelated to ancient history) here. This is really something to be very, very happy about.

Plutarch, That a Philosopher ought to Converse especially with Men in Power

Plutarch, bust from the museum of Delphi.

Although LacusCurtius‘ Bill Thayer is also occupied with putting online texts on the history of the United States, he continues to put online the Moralia by Plutarch. Today’s contribution is a brief treatise with the dazzling title That a Philosopher ought to Converse especially with Men in Power.

Plutarch addresses an old question. Plato had argued that in the best constitution, the state was ruled by philosophers. When he was offered to organize Syracuse according to his ideas, Plato failed miserably. His pupil, Aristotle, argued that it was better if a king had philosophers as his advisers. Plutarch essentially sides with the latter, arguing that one should not put a light under a bushel.

Love, alla greca

Aphrodite and a satyr

New on Lacus today: ps-Plutarch, Love Stories/Ἐρωτικαί διηγήσεις. Five charming stories of rape, murder, and vengeance — not a word about love in any of them — as only the Greeks could write them.

Actually, that’s not quite true: parental love is in there, poking its head out from the various slaughters, curses, and suicides. If you really do want to read a Greek love story though, you’ll do much better to read Heliodorus’ Aethiopica.

Two texts by Plutarch

Plutarch, bust from the museum of Delphi.

LacusCurtius‘ Bill Thayer has returned to putting online the Moralia by Plutarch, and today, we can read two well-known treatises:

• To an Uneducated Ruler / Πρὸς ἡγεμόνα ἀπαίδευτον
• On Monarchy, Democracy, and Oligarchy / Περὶ μοναρχίας καὶ δημοκρατίας καὶ ὀλιγαρχίας

Both texts are fragments of larger discourses. The ideas are not very original, which the ancients almost expect from texts on this subject. The constitutional debates in Herodotus (Histories, 3.82), Cassius Dio (Roman History, 52), Josephus (Jewish Antiquities, 19), and Philostratus (Life of Apollonius, 5.31ff) are surprisingly similar. Plutarch’s ideas are another branch of this tree.

The Glory of Athens

The Parthenon

So many of the Greek and Roman texts I transcribe and present on Lacus can be considered as irrelevant to us today, if not in their most general lines of course, certainly in their details. One of today’s items, though, is not: Plutarch’s fragmentary essay On the Glory of Athens. I hadn’t read it, but it was part of the immense backlog of items not online or not onsite that I was eventually going to get around to; Jona’s entry a few days ago on the runner of Marathon decided me to put it up, mostly so he’d have something to link to for the careful reader eager to read the actual source. The incidental mention of Marathon aside, however, the essay itself turned out to be so relevant to the modern world and to modern America, that I’m not far from considering it part of my American history site. (The Greek original is also up.)

While I was at it, I noticed that a squib of Plutarch that I’d already put up in English translation, the Greek wasn’t that long, why not — so it’s now gone to join it: Εἰ διδακτόν ἡ ἀρετή.

The Antiquary’s Shoebox

Drawing of a pyxis from Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities

Several years ago, LacusCurtius‘ Bill Thayer started to put online some articles from scholarly journals. They are a bit old, but nevertheless, they are a treasure-trove of interesting and varied stuff. He called this section the Antiquary’s Shoebox, and like most shoeboxes, it accumulates scraps over time, as Bill discovers items that catch his fancy.

If I have counted correctly, it now contains 137 articles. The latest contributions are on Early British Christianity, St. Nerses the Graceful (including some of the hymns of this 12c Armenian patriarch), an emendation to Tacitus’ Agricola, and Claudius and the Quaestura Gallica.

A glut of Tacitus

I’ve now delivered on my threat of some time back: Tacitus’ Annals are now online on LacusCurtius. Just in English translation, although a more recent translation than the Church and Brodribb seen in a few copies elsewhere on the Web.

By something like 90% coincidence, my friend Susan Rhoads has just completed, if with my own fingers in the pie in some minor respects, putting online Tacitus’ Agricola and Germania, also just in English. There was, that I know of, no English translation of the Agricola anywhere online.