1.
Ancient Greek
–
Ancient Greek includes the forms of Greek used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BC to the 6th century AD. It is often divided into the Archaic period, Classical period. It is antedated in the second millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Hellenistic phase is known as Koine. Koine is regarded as a historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it closely resembled Attic Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects, Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical phases of the language, Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms, homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic, the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period and they have the same general outline, but differ in some of the detail. The invasion would not be Dorian unless the invaders had some relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Often non-west is called East Greek, Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, and Northern Peloponnesus Doric. The Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek and this dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek, by about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek
Ancient Greek
–
Inscription about the construction of the statue of
Athena Parthenos in the
Parthenon, 440/439 BC
Ancient Greek
–
Ostracon bearing the name of
Cimon,
Stoa of Attalos
Ancient Greek
–
The words ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ as they are inscribed on the marble of the 1955
Leonidas Monument at
Thermopylae
2.
Manuscript
–
A manuscript is any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to being mechanically printed or reproduced in some automated way. More recently, it is understood to be a written, typed, or word-processed copy of a work. Before the arrival of printing, all documents and books were manuscripts, manuscripts are not defined by their contents, which may combine writing with mathematical calculations, maps, explanatory figures or illustrations. Manuscripts may be in form, scrolls or in codex format. Illuminated manuscripts are enriched with pictures, border decorations, elaborately embossed initial letters or full-page illustrations. The traditional abbreviations are MS for manuscript and MSS for manuscripts, while the forms MS. ms or ms. for singular, and MSS. mss or mss. for plural are also accepted. The second s is not simply the plural, by an old convention, it doubles the last letter of the abbreviation to express the plural, just as pp. means pages. Before the invention of printing in China or by moveable type in a printing press in Europe. Historically, manuscripts were produced in form of scrolls or books, manuscripts were produced on vellum and other parchment, on papyrus, and on paper. In Russia birch bark documents as old as from the 11th century have survived, in India, the palm leaf manuscript, with a distinctive long rectangular shape, was used from ancient times until the 19th century. Paper spread from China via the Islamic world to Europe by the 14th century, when Greek or Latin works were published, numerous professional copies were made simultaneously by scribes in a scriptorium, each making a single copy from an original that was declaimed aloud. Manuscripts in Tocharian languages, written on leaves, survived in desert burials in the Tarim Basin of Central Asia. Volcanic ash preserved some of the Roman library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, ironically, the manuscripts that were being most carefully preserved in the libraries of antiquity are virtually all lost. Originally, all books were in manuscript form, in China, and later other parts of East Asia, woodblock printing was used for books from about the 7th century. The earliest dated example is the Diamond Sutra of 868, in the Islamic world and the West, all books were in manuscript until the introduction of movable type printing in about 1450. Manuscript copying of books continued for a least a century, as printing remained expensive, private or government documents remained hand-written until the invention of the typewriter in the late 19th century. In the Philippines, for example, as early as 900AD, specimen documents were not inscribed by stylus and this type of document was rare compared to the usual leaves and bamboo staves that were inscribed. However, neither the leaves nor paper were as durable as the document in the hot
Manuscript
–
Christ Pantocrator seated in a capital "U" in an
illuminated manuscript from the Badische Landesbibliothek, Germany.
Manuscript
–
10th-century minuscule manuscript of
Thucydides 's
History of the Peloponnesian War
Manuscript
–
Armenian Manuscript
Manuscript
3.
Gloss (annotation)
–
A gloss is a brief notation, especially a marginal one or an interlinear one, of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text, or in the language if that is different. A collection of glosses is a glossary, a collection of medieval legal glosses, made by glossators, is called an apparatus. The compilation of glosses into glossaries was the beginning of lexicography, in modern times a glossary, as opposed to a dictionary, is typically found in a text as an appendix of specialized terms that the typical reader may find unfamiliar. Also, satirical explanations of words and events are called glosses, the German Romantic movement used the expression of gloss for poems commenting on a given other piece of poetry, often in the Spanish Décima style. Glosses were originally made in the margin or between the lines of a text in a classical language, the meaning of a word or passage is explained by the gloss. Today parenthetical explanations in scientific writing and technical writing are often called glosses. Hyperlinks to a glossary sometimes supersede them, the word gloss was first used in the 1570s to refer to the insertion of a word as an explanation. It began to be used to mean to explain away in the 1630s, glosses and other marginal notes were a primary format used in medieval Biblical theology, and were studied and memorized for their own merit. Many Biblical passages came to be associated with a particular gloss, in the medieval legal tradition, the glosses on Roman law and Canon law created standards of reference, so-called sedes materiae. In common law countries, the term judicial gloss refers to what is considered an authoritative or official interpretation of a statute or regulation by a judge, judicial glosses are often very important in avoiding contradictions between statutes, and determining the constitutionality of various provisions of law. A gloss, or glosa, is a verse in traditional Iberian literature and music which follows, glosses are of some importance in philology, especially if one language—usually, the language of the author of the gloss—has left few texts of its own. A series of glosses in the Old English language to Latin Bibles give us a running translation of Biblical texts in that language, glosses of Christian religious texts are also important for our knowledge of Old Irish. In linguistics, a gloss in running text may be marked by single quotation marks. For example, A Cossack longboat is called a chaika seagull, the moose gains its name from the Algonquian mus or mooz. A longer or more complex transcription may rely upon an interlinear gloss, such a gloss may be placed between a text and its translation when it is important to understand the structure of the language being glossed, and not just the overall meaning of the passage. Sign languages are typically transcribed word-for-word by means of a written in the predominant oral language in all capitals, American Sign Language. Prosody is often glossed as superscript words, with its scope indicated by brackets, pure fingerspelling is usually indicated by hyphenation
Gloss (annotation)
–
A gloss is a marginal notation regarding the main text in a document. Shown is a parchment page from the Royal Library of Copenhagen.
Gloss (annotation)
–
The
Glosas Emilianenses are glosses added to this Latin codex that are now considered the first phrases written in the
Castilian language.
4.
Literary history
–
Some recorded materials, such as compilations of data are not considered literature, and this article relates only to the evolution of the works defined above. Literature and writing, though connected, are not synonymous, scholars have often disagreed concerning when written record-keeping became more like literature than anything else, the definition is largely subjective. Moreover, given the significance of distance as a cultural isolator in earlier centuries, the historical development of literature did not occur at an even pace across the world. Much has been written, for example, about the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in the 1st century BC, the deliberate suppression of texts by organisations of either a spiritual or a temporal nature further shrouds the subject. Certain primary texts, however, may be isolated which have a role as literatures first stirrings. Many texts handed down by oral tradition over several centuries before they were fixed in form are difficult or impossible to date. The core of the Rigveda may date to the mid 2nd millennium BC, the Pentateuch is traditionally dated to the 15th century, although modern scholarship estimates its oldest part to date to the 10th century BC at the earliest. Homers Iliad and Odyssey date to the 8th century BC and mark the beginning of Classical Antiquity and they also stand in an oral tradition that stretches back to the late Bronze Age. The great Hindu epics were also transmitted orally, likely predating the Maurya period, the Classic of Poetry is the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, comprising 305 works by anonymous authors dating from the 11th to 7th centuries BC. The Chu Ci anthology is a volume of poems attributed to or considered to be inspired by Qu Yuans verse writing. Qu Yuan is the first author of verse in China to have his name associated to his work and is regarded as one of the most prominent figures of Romanticism in Chinese classical literature. The first great author on military tactics and strategy was Sun Tzu, among the earliest Chinese works of narrative history, Zuo Zhuan is a gem of classical Chinese prose. This work and the Shiji or Records of the Grand Historian, were regarded as the models by many generations of prose stylists in ancient China. The books that constitute the Hebrew Bible developed over roughly a millennium, the oldest texts seem to come from the eleventh or tenth centuries BCE, whilst most of the other texts are somewhat later. They are edited works, being collections of various sources intricately and carefully woven together, the Old Testament was compiled and edited by various men over a period of centuries, with many scholars concluding that the Hebrew canon was solidified by about the 3rd century BC. The works have been subject to various literary evaluations, friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “In the Jewish Old Testament, there are men, things and speeches in so grand a style that Greek and Indian literature have nothing to compare to it. One stands with awe and reverence before these tremendous remnants of what man once was, the taste for the Old Testament is a touchstone of greatness and smallness. ”Ancient Greek society placed considerable emphasis upon literature. Notable among later Greek poets was Sappho, who defined, in many ways, a playwright named Aeschylus changed Western literature forever when he introduced the ideas of dialogue and interacting characters to playwriting
Literary history
–
A stone tablet containing part of the
Epic of Gilgamesh
Literary history
–
Literature
Literary history
–
"Ali Baba" by
Maxfield Parrish.
Literary history
–
Arabic manuscript of the
One Thousand and One Nights.
5.
Eustathius of Thessalonica
–
Eustathius of Thessalonica was a Greek scholar and Archbishop of Thessalonica. He was officially canonized on June 10,1988, and his feast day is on September 20, a pupil of Nicholas Kataphloron, Eustathius was appointed to the offices of superintendent of petitions, professor of rhetoric, and was ordained a deacon in Constantinople. He was ordained bishop of Myra, around the year 1178, he was appointed to the archbishopric of Thessalonica, where he remained until his death around 1195/1196. Accounts of his life and work are given in the orations by Euthymius. Niketas Choniates praised him as the most learned man of his age and he wrote commentaries on ancient Greek poets, theological treatises, addresses, letters, and an important account of the sack of Thessalonica by William II of Sicily in 1185. Of his works, his commentaries on Homer are the most widely referred to, other works exhibit impressive character, and oratorical power, which earned him the esteem of the Komnenoi emperors. Politically, Eustathios was a supporter of emperor Manuel I, an original thinker, Eustathios sometimes praised such secular values as military prowess. He decried slavery, and believed in the concept of progress of civilization from a primitive to a more advanced state. His most important works are the following, On the Capture of Thessalonica, the Greek text was edited by Kyriakidis, with an Italian translation by V. Rotolo, there is an English translation by J. Melville-Jones, and a German translation by H. Hunger. A number of orations, some of which have been edited by P. Wirth, in 2013 a translation of six of the earliest of these speeches was published with a commentary by Andrew F. Stone. Commentaries on Homers Iliad and Odyssey and these address questions of grammar, etymology, mythology, history and geography. They are not so much original commentaries as extracts from earlier commentators - there are many correspondences with Homeric scholia and this is a great tribute to the state of the libraries of Constantinople and of classical scholarship there in the 12th century. He was also a reader of the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus. Some of the etymological and grammatical comments by Eustathioss Alexandrian predecessors are full of errors, the first printed edition, by Majoranus, was published in Rome in 1542-1550, an inaccurate reprint being later published in Basel in 1559-1560. A. Potitus edition, contains only the commentary on the first five books of the Iliad with a Latin translation and these were superseded by the edition of M. van der Valk,1971 onwards. Extracts from the commentaries are quoted in editions of the Homeric poems. This is as diffuse as the commentary on Homer, but includes numerous valuable extracts from earlier writers, no manuscript of this has come to light, but the introduction survives. (The introduction was first published by Tafel in his Eustathii Thessalonicensis Opuscula, from which it was reprinted separately by Schneidewin, some were first published by Tafel in the 1832 Opuscula just mentioned, some appeared later, as by P. Wirth for the Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae series
Eustathius of Thessalonica
–
Icon of Eustathios of Thessalonike (
Vatopedi Monastery, 1312).
6.
Byzantium under the Komnenoi
–
The Byzantine Empire or Byzantium is a term conventionally used by historians to describe the Greek ethnic and speaking Roman Empire of the Middle Ages, centered on its capital of Constantinople. Having survived the fall of the Western Roman Empire during Late Antiquity, in the context of Byzantine history, the period from about 1081 to about 1185 is often known as the Komnenian or Comnenian period, after the Komnenos dynasty. Moreover, it was during the Komnenian period that contact between Byzantium and the Latin Christian West, including the Crusader states, was at its most crucial stage. Above all, the impact of Byzantine art on the west at this period was enormous. The Komnenoi also made a significant contribution to the history of Asia Minor, by reconquering much of the region, the Komnenoi set back the advance of the Turks in Anatolia by more than two centuries. In the process, they planted the foundations of the Byzantine successor states of Nicaea, Epirus, meanwhile, their extensive programme of fortifications has left an enduring mark upon the Anatolian landscape, which can still be appreciated today. The Komnenian era was born out of a period of great difficulty, in fact, most of the money was given away in the form of gifts to favourites of the emperor, extravagant court banquets, and expensive luxuries for the imperial family. Meanwhile, the remnants of the armed forces were allowed to decay. Elderly men with ill-maintained equipment mixed with new recruits who had never participated in a training exercise, the simultaneous arrival of aggressive new enemies – Turks in the east and Normans in the west – was another contributory factor. In 1040, the Normans, originally landless mercenaries from northern parts of Europe in search of plunder, in order to deal with them, a mixed force of mercenaries and conscripts under the formidable George Maniakes was sent to Italy in 1042. Maniakes and his army conducted a successful campaign, but before it could be concluded he was recalled to Constantinople. Angered by a series of outrages against his wife and property by one of his rivals, he was proclaimed emperor by his troops, however, a mortal wound led to his death shortly afterwards. With opposition thus absent in the Balkans, the Normans were able to complete the expulsion of the Byzantines from Italy by 1071, despite the seriousness of this loss, it was in Asia Minor that the empires greatest disaster would take place. With imperial armies weakened by years of insufficient funding and civil warfare, Emperor Romanos Diogenes realised that a time of re-structuring, consequently, he attempted to lead a defensive campaign in the east until his forces had recovered enough to defeat the Seljuks. However, he suffered a defeat at the hands of Alp Arslan at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. Romanos was captured, and although the Sultans peace terms were fairly lenient, on his release, Romanos found that his enemies had conspired against him to place their own candidate on the throne in his absence. After two defeats in battle against the rebels, Romanos surrendered and suffered a death by torture. The new ruler, Michael Doukas, refused to honour the treaty that had signed by Romanos
Byzantium under the Komnenoi
–
Nikephoros III Botaniates, Byzantine emperor from 1078 to 1081.
Byzantium under the Komnenoi
–
The Byzantine Empire during the reign of
Manuel I Komnenos, ca. 1170
Byzantium under the Komnenoi
–
This
electrum histamenon was struck by Alexios during his war against
Robert Guiscard. The catastrophic financial situation of the Empire after 1071 had led to large-scale debasement of its coinage.
Byzantium under the Komnenoi
–
Medieval manuscript depicting the Capture of Jerusalem during the First Crusade.
7.
Palaeologan Renaissance
–
From the start, the régime faced numerous problems. The Turks of Asia Minor had since 1263 been raiding and expanding into Byzantine territory in Asia Minor, Anatolia, which had formed the very heart of the shrinking empire, was systematically lost to numerous Turkic ghazis, whose raids evolved into conquering expeditions inspired by Islamic zeal. By 1380, the Byzantine Empire consisted of the capital Constantinople and a few other isolated exclaves, the last remnants of the Byzantine Empire, the Despotate of the Morea and the Empire of Trebizond, fell shortly afterwards. However, the Palaiologan period witnessed a flourishing in art. The migration of Byzantine scholars to the West also helped to spark the Renaissance in Italy, in addition, the disintegration of the Byzantine Empire allowed the Bulgarians, the Serbs and the various Turcoman emirates of Anatolia to make gains. Although Epirus was initially the strongest of the three Greek states, the Nicaeans were the ones who succeeded in taking back the city of Constantinople from the Latin Empire, the Nicaean Empire was successful in holding its own against its Latin and Seljuk opponents. At the Battle of Meander Valley, a Turkic force was repelled, in the west, the Latins were unable to expand into Anatolia, consolidating Thrace against Bulgaria was a challenge that kept the Latins occupied for the duration of the Latin Empire. In 1261, the Empire of Nicaea was ruled by John IV Laskaris, however, John IV was overshadowed by his co-emperor, Michael VIII Palaiologos. In 1261, while the bulk of the Latin Empires military forces were absent from Constantinople, Thrace, Macedonia and Thessalonica had already been taken by Nicaea in 1246. Following the capture of Constantinople, Michael ordered the blinding of John IV in December 1261, as a result, Patriarch Arsenios excommunicated Michael, but he was deposed and replaced by Joseph I. The Fourth Crusade and their successors, the Latin Empire, had much to reduce Byzantiums finest city to an underpopulated wreck. Michael VIII began the task of restoring many monasteries, public buildings, the Hagia Sophia, horribly looted in the Crusade of 1204, was refurbished to Greek Orthodox tradition. The Kontoskalion harbour and the walls of Constantinople were all strengthened against a new expedition by the Latin West. Many hospitals, hospices, markets, baths, streets and churches were built, even a new Mosque was built to compensate for the one burnt during the Fourth Crusade. These attempts were costly and crippling taxes were placed on the peasantry, nonetheless, the city grew new cultural and diplomatic contacts, notably with the Mamelukes. Both had common enemies, Latin aggression, and later on, the Sultanate of Rum was in chaos and decentralized ever since the Mongol invasions in ca. The situation became worse when Charles of Anjou, brother of the King of France, in 1267, Pope Clement IV arranged a pact, whereby Charles would receive land in the East in return for assisting a new military expedition to Constantinople. Unfortunately for Michael VIII, the new union was seen as a fake by the Clements successor, the Greek Church was excommunicated, and Charles was given renewed Papal support for the invasion of Constantinople
Palaeologan Renaissance
–
The Byzantine Empire ca. 1265
Palaeologan Renaissance
–
Dynastical Banner
Palaeologan Renaissance
–
After 1204, the Byzantine Empire was partitioned between various successor states, with the Latin Empire in control of Constantinople
Palaeologan Renaissance
–
Hyperpyron of Michael VIII
8.
Homer
–
Homer is the name ascribed by the ancient Greeks to the semi-legendary author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems which are the central works of Greek literature. The Odyssey focuses on the home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca. Many accounts of Homers life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread being that he was a bard from Ionia. The modern scholarly consensus is that these traditions do not have any historical value, the Homeric question - by whom, when, where and under what circumstances were the Iliad and Odyssey composed - continues to be debated. Broadly speaking, modern scholarly opinion on the authorship question falls into two camps, one group holds that most of the Iliad and the Odyssey is the work of a single poet of genius. The other considers the Homeric poems to be the crystallization of a process of working and re-working by many contributors and it is generally accepted that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century B. C. Most researchers believe that the poems were transmitted orally. The Homeric epics were the greatest influence on ancient Greek culture and education, to Plato, the chronological period of Homer depends on the meaning to be assigned to the word Homer. Was Homer a single person, an imaginary person representing a group of poets and this information is often called the world of Homer. The Homeric period would in that cover a number of historical periods, especially the Mycenaean Age. Considered word-for-word, the texts as we know them are the product of the scholars of the last three centuries. Each edition of the Iliad or Odyssey is a different, as the editors rely on different manuscripts and fragments. The term accuracy reveals a belief in an original uniform text. The manuscripts of the work currently available date to no earlier than the 10th century. These are at the end of a missing thousand-year chain of copies made as each generation of manuscripts disintegrated or were lost or destroyed and these numerous manuscripts are so similar that a single original can be postulated. The time gap in the chain is bridged by the scholia, or notes, on the existing manuscripts, librarian of the Library of Alexandria, he had noticed a wide divergence in the works attributed to Homer, and was trying to restore a more authentic copy. He had collected several manuscripts, which he named, the Sinopic, the one he selected for correction was the koine, which Murray translates as the Vulgate. Aristarchus was known for his selection of material
Homer
–
Idealized portrayal of Homer dating to the
Hellenistic period.
British Museum.
Homer
–
Part of an 11th-century manuscript, "the Townley Homer". The writing on the top and right side are
scholia.
Homer
–
Homer and His Guide, by
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905), portraying Homer on
Mount Ida, beset by dogs and guided by the goatherder Glaucus (as told in
Pseudo-Herodotus)
Homer
–
Raphael 's inspired Homer on
Mount Parnassus.
9.
Iliad
–
The iLiad was an electronic handheld device, or e-Reader, which could be used for document reading and editing. Like the Barnes and Noble nook, Sony Reader or Amazon Kindle, in 2010, sales of the iLiad ended when its parent company, iRex, filed for bankruptcy. The display used is an active matrix display, which uses E Ink Vizplex Imaging Film manufactured by E Ink Corporation. Underneath the E Ink screen is a tablet by WACOM which requires a stylus for input. When it was introduced, the Iliad had largest screen size of existing e-paper products, the iLiad can display document files in several formats, including PDF, Mobipocket, XHTML and plain text. It can also display JPEG, BMP and PNG images, as of May 3,2007 Mobipocket is supported, making the mobipocket digital rights management content available on this platform. IRexs product page for the states that Support for additional E-book formats will become available over the coming months. Through its wireless service, iDS, the iLiad can also download content. Les Echos, a French financial newspaper, is distributed this way, users can connect to their computer over a wireless network to sync new data onto the iLiads internal memory or an inserted MMC, SD, or CF card. The distributor of the iLiad is iRex Technologies, a Philips spin-off company and it was initially advertised in December 2005, to be launched in April 2006, but was delayed until July, when it started to be sold as a beta product. It was released to the public near the end of July. Its list price in Europe is €649, and in US $699, one of the advanced features of the iLiad is the ability to add notes to existing documents. With the integrated Wacom tablet and stylus, it is possible to directly on almost any document. Using the desktop software, those notes can be merged into the original document and this provides malleability, an important feature of physical books that is missing from most ebook products, allowing users to annotate, highlight, and personalize the text. Because of its open Linux operating system, the iLiad is able to run third party applications created for it, developers and users wishing to create or run third party applications can request shell access from the manufacturer. Developers have been able to improve on the devices functionality by porting viewers such as FBReader, full screen PDF reading is made available by community-supported iPDF releases. Programs for recreation, including audio playback, sudoku, and calendars, are rapidly growing community content available for use on the iLiad, independent users have also reported successful porting of mobile web browsers to iLiads Linux platform, although with limited functionality and many bugs. IRex as a company has had a relationship with its Open Source developers
Iliad
–
iRex iLiad
Iliad
Iliad
–
iLiad in sunlight
Iliad
–
iLiad e-book reader equipped with e-paper display
10.
Biblioteca Marciana
–
The library is named after St. Mark, the patron saint of Venice. It is not to be confused with the State Archive of the Republic of Venice, the library was provided with a building designed by Jacopo Sansovino. The first sixteen arcaded bays of his design were constructed during 1537 to 1553, with work on frescoes, one of the early librarians, from 1530, was Pietro Bembo. However, the stock began to be collected before the construction of the building. The Marciana was enriched by the transfer in the eighteenth century of the collections accumulated in several monasteries. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice and S, major additions made to the collection include,1589, Melchiorre Guilandino of Marienburg,1595, Jacopo Contarini da S. The Library has since expanded back into its adjacent original quarters, today, besides about a million printed books, the Biblioteca Marciana contains about 13,000 manuscripts and 2883 incunabula and 24,055 works printed between 1500 and 1600. Among the irreplaceable treasures are unique scores of operas by Francesco Cavalli and sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti
Biblioteca Marciana
–
The Biblioteca Marciana building, designed by
Jacopo Sansovino.
11.
Venetus A
–
Venetus A is the more common name for the tenth century AD manuscript catalogued in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice as Codex Marcianus Graecus 454, now 822. Venetus A is the most famous manuscript of the Homeric Iliad, as a result, the task of tracing their contents to their sources is extraordinarily difficult and obscure. The study of the Iliadic scholia is a significant ongoing topic in Homeric scholarship. The A scholia, for which Venetus A is by far the most important source, derive from the so-called VMK, named for the four ancient scholars Aristonicus, Didymus, Herodian, and Nicanor. The main source for the A scholia was probably a compilation of their work, because all four of these scholars worked in the tradition of the Alexandrian scholar Aristarchus, much of the A scholia can be traced back to Aristarchus himself. The relationship between the A scholia and other branches of the Iliadic scholia, however, is more debatable. A text which does not survive, known as ApH for its authors Apion, two stemmata or family trees for Venetus A may be summarised from the work of van der Valk and Erbse respectively, Of the two, Erbses viewpoint tends to be the more highly regarded. Another important source that feeds into A is a group of scholia on mythographical and allegorical topics, the current standard edition of the Iliads scholia, that of Erbse, omits these scholia. On the origins of the Proclean Chrestomathy which is preserved in Venetus A, see also Epic Cycle. Venetus A was created in the tenth century AD, all text on the manuscript dates to the same period, including the Iliad text, critical marks, and two sets of scholia in different writing styles. The twelfth century Byzantine scholar and archbishop Eustathius, even if he never saw the manuscript itself, certainly knew texts which were related to it. At some point Venetus A was transported to Italy, but how, at one point it was thought that Giovanni Aurispa brought it there. Aurispa already owned the two volumes in 1421, this suggests that he may have them back from a trip to Greece in 1413. For a long time it was thought that two volumes were Venetus A and Venetus B. Venetus A came into the possession of Cardinal Bessarion, the Greek immigrant and scholar, Bessarion collected over a thousand books in the fifteenth century, including the only complete text of Athenaios Deipnosophistai, the autograph of Planudes Greek Anthology, and Venetus A. In 1468, Bessarion donated his library to the Republic of Venice, and this collection became the core of the Biblioteca Marciana. Bessarion made a condition that scholars wishing to consult the library should deposit books, the earliest known scholar to have used Venetus A as a source is Martinus Phileticus in the 1480s, in this he was followed by Vettore Fausto in 1546 or 1547. In 1554, Bessarions library was transferred to the designed for it by Sansovino
Venetus A
–
Van der Valk 's reconstruction of the sources for Venetus A; bold text indicates texts that survive
12.
Homeric scholarship
–
Homeric scholarship is the study of any Homeric topic, especially the two large surviving epics, the Iliad and Odyssey. It is currently part of the discipline of classical studies. The subject is one of the oldest in scholarship, for the purpose of the present article, Homeric scholarship is divided into three main phases, antiquity, the 18th and 19th centuries, and the 20th century and later. Scholia are ancient commentaries, initially written in the margins of manuscripts, not necessarily at the bottom, as are their modern equivalents, some are interlinear, written in very small characters. Over time the scholia were copied along with the work, when the copyist ran out of free text space, he listed them on separate pages or in separate works. Today’s equivalents are the notes or the notes section at the end of the book. Notes are merely a continuation of the practice of creating or copying scholia in printed works, although the incunabula, the works of Homer have been heavily annotated from their written beginnings. The total number of notes on manuscripts and printed editions of the Iliad, the number of manuscripts of the Iliad is currently approximately 1800. The papyri of the Odyssey are less in number but are still in the order of dozens, the inventory is incomplete, and new finds continue to be made, but not all these texts contain scholia. No compendium has collated all of the Homeric scholia, following the Principle of Economy, the allocation of scarce publication space to overwhelming numbers of scholia, the compilers have had to make decisions about what is important enough to compile. Certain types, or lines, have distinguished, scholia have lines of descent of their own. The sources of the scholia are noted at the end of each book and their comments, and these scholia, are termed critical. A-scholia are found in manuscripts as well. Venetus A contains some bT scholia, the bT manuscripts descend from an earlier c. bT scholia are termed exegetical, as opposed to critical. They are from Porphyry and Heraclitus, with some from Didymus, the D scholia, or scholia Didymi, named erroneously for Didymus, are the earliest and largest group. They occur primarily in the 9th century Z, and the 11th century Q, but also in others, such as A and T. ”Some are also called the scholia minora and the scholia vulgata. Among the non-minor scholia are mythological aetia, plots, and paraphrases, the order of precedence and chronological order of these Iliad scholia is D, A, bT, and other. Material in them probably ranges from the 5th century BCE to as late as the 7th or 8th century CE, the same scheme applies to the Odyssey, except that A scholia, mainly of the Iliad, are in deficit
Homeric scholarship
–
Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 221, showing scholia from Illiad XXI
Homeric scholarship
–
Library of St. Mark's, Venice, home of Venetus A.
Homeric scholarship
–
Part of the
Parthenon Frieze, depicting the
Panathenaic Festival.
Elgin marble, located in the
British Museum.
Homeric scholarship
–
Site of the Academy in Athens.
13.
Hesiod
–
Hesiod was a Greek poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded as the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as a persona with an active role to play in his subject. Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs, modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought, archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping. The dating of his life is an issue in scholarly circles. Epic narrative allowed poets like Homer no opportunity for personal revelations, however, Hesiods extant work comprises didactic poems in which he went out of his way to let his audience in on a few details of his life. There are three references in Works and Days, as well as some passages in his Theogony that support inferences made by scholars. Some scholars have seen Perses as a creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod develops in Works and Days. Gregory Nagy, on the hand, sees both Persēs and Hēsiodos as fictitious names for poetical personae. The family association with Cyme might explain his familiarity with eastern myths, evident in his poems, however, while his poetry features some Aeolisms there are no words that are certainly Boeotian—he composed in the main literary dialect of the time, Ionian. Pausanias asserted that Boeotians showed him an old tablet made of lead on which the Works were engraved. If he did write or dictate, it was perhaps as an aid to memory or because he lacked confidence in his ability to produce poems extempore and it certainly wasnt in a quest for immortal fame since poets in his era had no such notions. However, some suspect the presence of large-scale changes in the text. Possibly he composed his verses during idle times on the farm and he was in fact a misogynist of the same calibre as the later poet, Semonides. He resembles Solon in his preoccupation with issues of good versus evil and how a just and he resembles Aristophanes in his rejection of the idealised hero of epic literature in favour of an idealised view of the farmer. Yet the fact that he could eulogise kings in Theogony and denounce them as corrupt in Works, two different—yet early—traditions record the site of Hesiods grave. This tradition follows a familiar ironic convention, the oracle that predicts accurately after all, the other tradition, first mentioned in an epigram by Chersias of Orchomenus written in the 7th century BC claims that Hesiod lies buried at Orchomenus, a town in Boeotia. Eventually they came to regard Hesiod too as their hearth-founder, later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts. Greeks in the fifth and early 4th centuries BC considered their oldest poets to be Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod
Hesiod
–
The Dance of the Muses at Mount Helicon by
Bertel Thorvaldsen (1807). Hesiod cites inspiration from the
Muses while on Mount Helicon.
Hesiod
–
Hesiod and the
Muse, by
Gustave Moreau. Here he is presented with a
lyre, which contradicts the account given by Hesiod himself, in which the gift was a laurel staff.
Hesiod
–
Modern Mount Helicon—Hesiod once described his nearby hometown,
Ascra, as "cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant."
Hesiod
–
16th-century manuscript of Theogony
14.
Pindar
–
Pindar was an Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved and his poems can also, however, seem difficult and even peculiar. The Athenian comic playwright Eupolis once remarked that they are reduced to silence by the disinclination of the multitude for elegant learning. His poetry, while admired by critics, still challenges the casual reader, Pindar was the first Greek poet to reflect on the nature of poetry and on the poets role. A dream of a shadow Is our mortal being, but when there comes to men A gleam of splendour given of heaven, Then rests on them a light of glory And blessed are their days. His poetry illustrates the beliefs and values of Archaic Greece at the dawn of the classical period, five ancient sources contain all the recorded details of Pindars life. One of them is a short biography discovered in 1961 on an Egyptian papyrus dating from at least 200 AD and it has been claimed that biographical interpretations of the poems are due to a fatal conjunction of historicism and Romanticism. In other words, we know almost nothing about Pindars life based on traditional sources or his own poems. However, the pendulum of fashion has begun to change direction again. He was probably born in 522 BC or 518 BC in Cynoscephalae and his fathers name is variously given as Daiphantus, Pagondas or Scopelinus, and his mothers name was Cleodice. It is reported that he was stung on the mouth by a bee in his youth, Pindar was about twenty years old in 498 BC when he was commissioned by the ruling family in Thessaly to compose his first victory ode. He studied the art of poetry in Athens, where his tutor was Lasos of Hermione. The early-to-middle years of Pindars career coincided with the Persian invasions of Greece in the reigns of Darius and it is possible that Pindar spent much of this time at Aegina. Thrasybulus had driven the winning chariot and he and Pindar were to form a lasting friendship, Pindar seems to have used his odes to advance his, and his friends, personal interests. In 462 BC he composed two odes in honour of Arcesilas, king of Cyrene, pleading for the return from exile of a friend, Demophilus. In the latter ode Pindar proudly mentions his own ancestry, which he shared with the king, as an Aegeid or descendent of Aegeus, the historian Herodotus considered the clan important enough to deserve mention. Pindar might not actually claim to be an Aegeid since his I statements do not necessarily refer to himself. He was possibly the Theban proxenos or consul for Aegina and/or Molossia, as indicated in another of his odes, Nemean 7, in which he glorifies Neoptolemus, a national hero of Aegina and Molossia
Pindar
–
Pindar, Roman copy of Greek 5th century BC bust (
Museo Archeologica Nazionale, Naples)
Pindar
–
A short Heracles: Pindar once ignored the traditional image of Heracles, the supreme example of the heroic physique, and described him as short in order to compare him with a short patron.
Pindar
–
The so-called 'Farnese Diadumenos' is a Roman copy of a Greek original attributed to
Polykleitos c.440 BC, depicting an athlete tying a victory ribbon round his head
15.
Sophocles
–
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were later than those of Aeschylus. He competed in 30 competitions, won 18, and was never judged lower than second place, Aeschylus won 14 competitions, and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles, while Euripides won 5 competitions. Sophocles influenced the development of drama, most importantly by adding a third actor and he also developed his characters to a greater extent than earlier playwrights such as Aeschylus. Sophocles, the son of Sophilus, was a member of the rural deme of Hippeios Colonus in Attica, which was to become a setting for one of his plays. Sophocles was born a few years before the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, Sophocles was born into a wealthy family and was highly educated. Sophocles first artistic triumph was in 468 BC, when he took first prize in the Dionysia theatre competition over the master of Athenian drama. According to Plutarch, the victory came under unusual circumstances, instead of following the usual custom of choosing judges by lot, the archon asked Cimon and the other strategoi present to decide the victor of the contest. Plutarch further contends that following this loss Aeschylus soon left for Sicily, although Plutarch says that this was Sophocles first production, it is now thought that his first production was probably in 470 BC. Triptolemus was probably one of the plays that Sophocles presented at this festival, in 480 BC Sophocles was chosen to lead the paean, celebrating the Greek victory over the Persians at the Battle of Salamis. Early in his career, the politician Cimon might have one of his patrons, although if he was, there was no ill will borne by Pericles, Cimons rival. In 443/2 he served as one of the Hellenotamiai, or treasurers of Athena, in 420 BC, he welcomed and set up an altar for the image of Asclepius at his house, when the deity was introduced to Athens. For this, he was given the posthumous epithet Dexion by the Athenians and he was also elected, in 413 BC, one of the commissioners who responded to the catastrophic destruction of the Athenian expeditionary force in Sicily during the Peloponnesian War. Sophocles died at the age of ninety or ninety-one in the winter of 406/5 BC, as with many famous men in classical antiquity, his death inspired a number of apocryphal stories. The most famous is the suggestion that he died from the strain of trying to recite a long sentence from his Antigone without pausing to take a breath, another account suggests he choked while eating grapes at the Anthesteria festival in Athens. A third holds that he died of happiness after winning his final victory at the City Dionysia, one of his sons, Iophon, and a grandson, also called Sophocles, also became playwrights. Several ancient sources mention Sophocles homosexuality or bisexuality, Athenaios reported that Sophocles loved boys like Euripides loved women. The poet Ion of Chios relates an anecdote involving Sophocles seducing a serving boy at a symposium, Aeschylus, who dominated Athenian playwriting during Sophocles early career, followed suit and adopted the third character into his own work towards the end of his life
Sophocles
–
Sophocles
Sophocles
–
A marble relief of a poet, perhaps Sophocles
Sophocles
–
Portrait of the
Greek actor Euiaon in Sophocles' Andromeda, c. 430 BC.
Sophocles
–
Naples Museum, Naples, Italy. Statue of Sophocles
16.
Aristophanes
–
Aristophanes, son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete and these, together with fragments of some of his other plays, provide the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, and are used to define it. Also known as the Father of Comedy and the Prince of Ancient Comedy and his second play, The Babylonians, was denounced by the demagogue Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis. In my opinion, he says through the Chorus in that play, less is known about Aristophanes than about his plays. In fact, his plays are the source of information about him. It was conventional in Old Comedy for the Chorus to speak on behalf of the author during a called the parabasis. However, these facts relate almost entirely to his career as a dramatist, Aristophanes claimed to be writing for a clever and discerning audience, yet he also declared that other times would judge the audience according to its reception of his plays. He sometimes boasts of his originality as a dramatist yet his plays consistently espouse opposition to new influences in Athenian society. He caricatured leading figures in the arts, in politics, such caricatures seem to imply that Aristophanes was an old-fashioned conservative, yet that view of him leads to contradictions. It has been argued that Aristophanes produced plays mainly to entertain the audience, an elaborate series of lotteries, designed to prevent prejudice and corruption, reduced the voting judges at the City Dionysia to just five in number. These judges probably reflected the mood of the audiences yet there is uncertainty about the composition of those audiences. The theatres were certainly huge, with seating for at least 10000 at the Theatre of Dionysus, the conservative views expressed in the plays might therefore reflect the attitudes of the dominant group in an unrepresentative audience. The production process might also have influenced the views expressed in the plays, throughout most of Aristophanes career, the Chorus was essential to a plays success and it was recruited and funded by a choregus, a wealthy citizen appointed to the task by one of the archons. Thus the political conservatism of the plays may reflect the views of the wealthiest section of Athenian society, when Aristophanes first play The Banqueters was produced, Athens was an ambitious, imperial power and the Peloponnesian War was only in its fourth year. His plays often express pride in the achievement of the older generation yet they are not jingoistic, the plays are particularly scathing in criticism of war profiteers, among whom populists such as Cleon figure prominently. However it is whether he led or merely responded to changes in audience expectations. Aristophanes won second prize at the City Dionysia in 427 BC with his first play The Banqueters and he won first prize there with his next play, The Babylonians. Some influential citizens, notably Cleon, reviled the play as slander against the polis, Cleon also seems to have had no real power to limit or control Aristophanes, the caricatures of him continued up to and even beyond his death
Aristophanes
–
Theatre of Dionysus, Athens — in Aristophanes' time, the audience probably sat on wooden benches with earth foundations.
Aristophanes
–
Illustration from a bust found near Tusculum†.
Aristophanes
–
Muse reading, Louvre
Aristophanes
–
Thalia,
muse of comedy, gazing upon a comic mask (detail from Muses' Sarcophagus)
17.
Apollonius Rhodius
–
Apollonius of Rhodes, is best known as the author of the Argonautica, an epic poem about Jason and the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. In fact almost nothing at all is known about Apollonius and even his connection with Rhodes is a matter for speculation, the most reliable information we have about ancient poets is largely drawn from their own works. Unfortunately, Apollonius of Rhodes reveals nothing about himself. Oxy,1241, which provides names of several heads of the Library of Alexandria. Other scraps can be gleaned from miscellaneous texts, the reports from all the above sources however are scanty and often self-contradictory. The two Lives and the Suda name Apollonius father as Silleus or Illeus, but both names are rare and may derive from σίλλος or lampoon, suggesting a comic source. The second Life names his mother as Rhode, but this is unlikely, Rhodē means Rhodian woman, and is almost certainly derived from an attempt to explain Apollonius epithet Rhodian. The Lives, the Suda, and the geographical writer Strabo say that he came from Alexandria, Athenaeus and Aelian say that he came from Naucratis, no source gives the date of his birth. The Lives and the Suda agree that Apollonius was a student of the poet, Vita B states that Callimachus was his instructor in rhetoric, but the terminology is anachronistic. Moreover, in ancient biographies pupil and student are figures of speech designating the influence one poet may have exercised over another, head of the Library of Alexandria. The second Life, the Suda, and P. Oxy,1241 attest that Apollonius held this post. 1241 bears some signs of confusion since it lists Apollonius under Ptolemy I Soter, the Suda says that Apollonius succeeded Eratosthenes, but this doesnt fit the evidence either. There was another Alexandrian librarian named Apollonius and this may have caused some of the confusion, the epithet Rhodios or Rhodian indicates that Apollonius had some kind of association with the island of that name. The Lives and the Suda attest to his move there from Alexandria and they differ about whether he died in Rhodes or came back to Alexandria to take up the position of head of the Library. According to Vita A, he was a teacher in Rhodes. In fact the epithet of Rhodes need not indicate any physical association with the island and it might simply reflect the fact that he once wrote a poem about Rhodes. According to Athenaeus, he was called the Naucratite. Some modern scholars doubt that he was given that title but, if he was. Only the two Lives give information about Apollonius death, and they disagree, the first reports that he died in Rhodes, the second reports that he died after returning to Alexandria and adds that some say he was buried with Callimachus
Apollonius Rhodius
–
A coin showing Ptolemy III Euergetes; a pupil of Apollonius?
18.
Latin
–
Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
Latin
–
Latin inscription, in the
Colosseum
Latin
–
Julius Caesar 's
Commentarii de Bello Gallico is one of the most famous classical Latin texts of the Golden Age of Latin. The unvarnished, journalistic style of this
patrician general has long been taught as a model of the urbane Latin officially spoken and written in the floruit of the
Roman republic.
Latin
–
A multi-volume Latin dictionary in the
University Library of Graz
Latin
–
Latin and Ancient Greek Language - Culture - Linguistics at
Duke University in 2014.
19.
Maurus Servius Honoratus
–
These works, In tria Virgilii Opera Expositio, constituted the first incunable to be printed at Florence, by Bernardo Cennini,1471. In the Saturnalia of Macrobius, Servius appears as one of the interlocutors, allusions in that work, the commentary on Virgil has survived in two distinct manuscript traditions. The first is a short commentary, which is attributed to Servius in the superscription in the manuscripts. A second class of manuscripts, all deriving from the 10th and 11th centuries, the added matter is undoubtedly ancient, dating from a time but little removed from that of Servius, and is founded to a large extent on historical and antiquarian literature which is now lost. The writer is anonymous and probably a Christian, although not if, as is often suggested, a third class of manuscripts, written for the most part in Italy, gives the core text with interpolated scholia, which demonstrate the continued usefulness of the Virgilii Opera Expositio. The authentic commentary of Maurus Servius Honoratus is in effect the only complete extant edition of a classic author written before the collapse of the Empire in the West, Servius set his face against the prevalent allegorical methods of exposition of text. For the antiquarian and the historian, the value of his work lies in his preservation of facts in Roman history, religion, antiquities and language. Not a little of the erudition of Varro and other ancient scholars has survived in his pages. The edition of Georg Thilo and Hermann Hagen, remains the only edition of the whole of Servius work. Currently in development is the Harvard Servius, of the five volumes. E. K. Rand, Is Donatuss Commentary on Virgil Lost, Donatuss authorship of the supplementary material. Servio, stratificazioni esegetiche e modelli culturali / Servius, exegetical stratifications, Latin Wikisource has original text related to this article, Maurus Servius Honoratus Commentary on the Aeneid of Virgil is at the Perseus Project in Latin. De Centum Metris at Intratext. com De Centum Metris at Forum Romanorum Servii grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii carmina commentarii, Georius Thilo, lipsiae in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1881-1902, vol. 2, vol.3 part 1, vol.3 part 2
Maurus Servius Honoratus
–
Servius commenting Virgil (France, 15th century).
Maurus Servius Honoratus
–
16th century edition of Virgil with Servius' commentary printed to the left of the text.
20.
Virgil
–
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil /ˈvɜːrdʒᵻl/ in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He wrote three of the most famous poems in Latin literature, the Eclogues, the Georgics, a number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, are sometimes attributed to him. Virgil is traditionally ranked as one of Romes greatest poets and his Aeneid has been considered the national epic of ancient Rome from the time of its composition to the present day. Virgils work has had wide and deep influence on Western literature, most notably Dantes Divine Comedy, in which Virgil appears as Dantes guide through Hell, the tradition holds that Virgil was born in the village of Andes, near Mantua in Cisalpine Gaul. Analysis of his name has led to beliefs that he descended from earlier Roman colonists, modern speculation ultimately is not supported by narrative evidence either from his own writings or his later biographers. Macrobius says that Virgils father was of a background, however. He attended schools in Cremona, Mediolanum, Rome and Naples, after considering briefly a career in rhetoric and law, the young Virgil turned his talents to poetry. From Virgils admiring references to the neoteric writers Pollio and Cinna, it has been inferred that he was, for a time, according to Servius, schoolmates considered Virgil extremely shy and reserved, and he was nicknamed Parthenias or maiden because of his social aloofness. Virgil also seems to have suffered bad health throughout his life, according to the Catalepton, he began to write poetry while in the Epicurean school of Siro the Epicurean at Naples. A group of works attributed to the youthful Virgil by the commentators survive collected under the title Appendix Vergiliana. One, the Catalepton, consists of fourteen poems, some of which may be Virgils, and another. The biographical tradition asserts that Virgil began the hexameter Eclogues in 42 BC and it is thought that the collection was published around 39–38 BC, the Eclogues are a group of ten poems roughly modeled on the bucolic hexameter poetry of the Hellenistic poet Theocritus. The loss of his farm and the attempt through poetic petitions to regain his property have traditionally been seen as Virgils motives in the composition of the Eclogues. This is now thought to be an unsupported inference from interpretations of the Eclogues, the ten Eclogues present traditional pastoral themes with a fresh perspective. Eclogues 1 and 9 address the land confiscations and their effects on the Italian countryside,2 and 3 are pastoral and erotic, discussing both homosexual love and attraction toward people of any gender. Eclogue 4, addressed to Asinius Pollio, the so-called Messianic Eclogue uses the imagery of the age in connection with the birth of a child. Virgil came to many of the other leading literary figures of the time, including Horace, in whose poetry he is often mentioned, and Varius Rufus. At Maecenas insistence Virgil spent the years on the long didactic hexameter poem called the Georgics which he dedicated to Maecenas
Virgil
–
Depiction of Virgil, 3rd century AD ("Monnus-Mosaic",
Rheinisches Landesmuseum,
Trier)
Virgil
–
A
bust of Virgil in
Naples
Virgil
–
Page from the Eclogues in the 5th-century Vergilius Romanus
Virgil
–
Late 17th-century illustration of a passage from the Georgics by
Jerzy Siemiginowski-Eleuter
21.
Horace
–
Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. Horace also crafted elegant hexameter verses and caustic iambic poetry and his career coincided with Romes momentous change from a republic to an empire. An officer in the army defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, he was befriended by Octavians right-hand man in civil affairs, Maecenas. Some of the writings contained in his writings can be supplemented from the short. He was born on 8 December 65 BC in the Samnite south of Italy and his home town, Venusia, lay on a trade route in the border region between Apulia and Lucania. Various Italic dialects were spoken in the area and this perhaps enriched his feeling for language and he could have been familiar with Greek words even as a young boy and later he poked fun at the jargon of mixed Greek and Oscan spoken in neighbouring Canusium. Literary Latin must have sounded to him like a semi-foreign language, one of the works he probably studied in school was the Odyssia of Livius Andronicus, crammed into Italian boys with threats and floggings by teachers like the Orbilius mentioned in one of his poems. School was made particularly irksome by a number of his fellow pupils, the army veterans could have been settled there at the expense of local families uprooted by Rome as punishment for their part in the Social War. Such state-sponsored migration must have added still more variety to the area. According to a tradition reported by Horace, a colony of Romans or Latins had been installed in Venusia after the Samnites had been driven out early in the third century. In that case, young Horace could have felt himself to be a Roman though there are indications that he regarded himself as a Samnite or Sabellus by birth. Italians in modern and ancient times have always been devoted to their towns, even after success in the wider world. Images of his setting and references to it are found throughout his poems. Horaces father was probably a Venutian taken captive by Romans in the Social War, either way, he was a slave for at least part of his life. He was evidently a man of strong abilities however and managed to gain his freedom, thus Horace claimed to be the free-born son of a prosperous coactor. The father spent a fortune on his sons education, eventually accompanying him to Rome to oversee his schooling. The poet later paid tribute to him in a poem that one scholar considers the best memorial by any son to his father. As it is now, he deserves from me unstinting gratitude, I could never be ashamed of such a father, nor do I feel any need, as many people do, to apologize for being a freedmans son
Horace
–
Horace, as imagined by
Anton von Werner
Horace
–
Horace reads before Maecenas, by
Fyodor Bronnikov
Horace
–
"Justum et tenacem propositi virum" – "a man just and steadfast in purpose", from Horace's
Odes, III.3, on the gravestone of Elliot Charles Bovill, Chief Justice of the
Straits Settlements, in
Fort Canning Green, Singapore
Horace
–
Ode XIV -
Wall poem in Leiden
22.
Terence
–
Publius Terentius Afer, better known in English as Terence, was a Roman playwright during the Roman Republic, of Berber descent. His comedies were performed for the first time around 170–160 BC, Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought Terence to Rome as a slave, educated him and later on, impressed by his abilities, freed him. Terence apparently died young, probably in Greece or on his way back to Rome, all of the six plays Terence wrote have survived. One famous quotation by Terence reads, Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto, or I am human and this appeared in his play Heauton Timorumenos. He may have born in or near Carthage or in Greek Italy to a woman taken to Carthage as a slave. Terences cognomen Afer suggests he lived in the territory of the Libyan tribe called by the Romans Afri near Carthage prior to being brought to Rome as a slave. Later, after the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, it was used to refer to anyone from the land of the Afri and it is therefore most likely that Terence was of Libyan descent, considered ancestors to the modern-day Berber peoples. In any case, he was sold to P. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, Terence then took the nomen Terentius, which is the origin of the present form. He was a member of the so-called Scipionic Circle, when he was 25, Terence travelled to Greece and never returned. It is mostly believed that Terence died during the journey, before his disappearance he exhibited six comedies which are still in existence. According to some ancient writers, he died at sea, like Plautus, Terence adapted Greek plays from the late phases of Attic comedy. Terence wrote in a simple conversational Latin, and most students who persevere long enough to be able to him in the original find his style particularly pleasant. Aelius Donatus, Jeromes teacher, is the earliest surviving commentator on Terences work, there is evidence, however, that Terence was performed much earlier. The short dialogue Terentius et delusor was probably written to be performed as an introduction to a Terentian performance in the 9th century, due to his clear and entertaining language, Terences works were heavily used by monasteries and convents during the Middle Ages and The Renaissance. Scribes often learned Latin through the copying of Terences texts. Priests and nuns often learned to speak Latin through reenactment of Terences plays, although Terences plays often dealt with heretical material, the quality of his language promoted the copying and preserving of his text by the church. The preservation of Terence through the church enabled his work to much of later Western drama. Terences plays were a part of the Latin curriculum of the neoclassical period
Terence
–
Alleged portrait of Terence, from
Codex Vaticanus Latinus 3868. Possibly copied from 3rd-century original.
Terence
–
1496 edition of Terence's Works
23.
Cicero
–
Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, politician, lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul, and constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy family of the Roman equestrian order. According to Michael Grant, the influence of Cicero upon the history of European literature, Cicero introduced the Romans to the chief schools of Greek philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary distinguishing himself as a translator and philosopher. Though he was an orator and successful lawyer, Cicero believed his political career was his most important achievement. During the chaotic latter half of the 1st century BC marked by civil wars, following Julius Caesars death, Cicero became an enemy of Mark Antony in the ensuing power struggle, attacking him in a series of speeches. His severed hands and head were then, as a revenge of Mark Antony. Petrarchs rediscovery of Ciceros letters is often credited for initiating the 14th-century Renaissance in public affairs, humanism, according to Polish historian Tadeusz Zieliński, the Renaissance was above all things a revival of Cicero, and only after him and through him of the rest of Classical antiquity. Cicero was born in 106 BC in Arpinum, a hill town 100 kilometers southeast of Rome and his father was a well-to-do member of the equestrian order and possessed good connections in Rome. However, being a semi-invalid, he could not enter public life, although little is known about Ciceros mother, Helvia, it was common for the wives of important Roman citizens to be responsible for the management of the household. Ciceros brother Quintus wrote in a letter that she was a thrifty housewife, Ciceros cognomen, or personal surname, comes from the Latin for chickpea, cicer. Plutarch explains that the name was given to one of Ciceros ancestors who had a cleft in the tip of his nose resembling a chickpea. However, it is likely that Ciceros ancestors prospered through the cultivation. Romans often chose down-to-earth personal surnames, the family names of Fabius, Lentulus, and Piso come from the Latin names of beans, lentils. Plutarch writes that Cicero was urged to change this name when he entered politics. During this period in Roman history, cultured meant being able to speak both Latin and Greek, Cicero used his knowledge of Greek to translate many of the theoretical concepts of Greek philosophy into Latin, thus translating Greek philosophical works for a larger audience. It was precisely his broad education that tied him to the traditional Roman elite, according to Plutarch, Cicero was an extremely talented student, whose learning attracted attention from all over Rome, affording him the opportunity to study Roman law under Quintus Mucius Scaevola. Ciceros fellow students were Gaius Marius Minor, Servius Sulpicius Rufus, the latter two became Ciceros friends for life, and Pomponius would become, in Ciceros own words, as a second brother, with both maintaining a lifelong correspondence. Cicero wanted to pursue a career in politics along the steps of the Cursus honorum
Cicero
–
A first century AD bust of Cicero in the
Capitoline Museums, Rome
Cicero
–
The Young Cicero Reading by
Vincenzo Foppa (fresco, 1464), now at the
Wallace Collection
Cicero
–
Cicero Denounces Catiline,
fresco by
Cesare Maccari, 1882–88
Cicero
–
Cicero's death (France, 15th century)
24.
Pro Milone
–
The Pro Tito Annio Milone ad iudicem oratio is a speech made by Marcus Tullius Cicero on behalf of his friend Titus Annius Milo. Milo was accused of murdering his political enemy Publius Clodius Pulcher on the Via Appia, Cicero wrote the speech in 52 BCE. Milo was a praetor at the time who was attempting to gain the much-vaunted post of consul, Clodius was a former tribune standing for the office of praetor. The charge was brought against Milo for the death of Clodius following a violent altercation on the Via Appia, after the initial brawl, it seems that Clodius was wounded during the fight that was started by both mens slaves. Presumably, Cicero correctly realised that to be the primary weakness, when initially questioned about the circumstances of Clodius death, Milo responded with the excuse of self-defense and that it was Clodius who laid a trap for Milo to kill him. Cicero had to fashion his speech to be congruent with Milos initial excuse, in doing so, it also burnt down much of the curia, Clodius supporters also launched an attack on the house of the then interrex, Marcus Lepidus. Pompey thus ordered a special inquest to investigate that as well as the murder of Clodius, Cicero refers to this incident throughout the Pro Milone by implying that there was greater general indignation and uproar at the burning of the curia than there was at the murder of Clodius. The violent nature of the crime as well as its revolutionary repercussions made Pompey set up a panel of judges. Thus, he avoided the corruption, rife in the scene of the late Roman Republic. In addition, armed guards were stationed around the law courts to placate the violent mobs of both sides supporters, the first four days of the trial were dedicated to opposition argument and the testimony of witnesses. On the first day, Gaius Causinius Schola appeared as a witness against Milo and that worked up Clodius supporters, who terrified the advocate on Milos side, Marcus Marcellus. As he began his questioning of the witnesses, the crowd drowned out his voice, the action taken by Pompey prevented much furore from the vehemently anti-Milo crowds for the rest of the case. On the second day of the trial, the cohorts were introduced by Pompey. On the fifth and final day, Cicero delivered Pro Milone in the hope of reversing the damning evidence, throughout the duration of his speech, Cicero does not even attempt to convince the judges that Milo did not kill Clodius. Cicero claims that the killing of Clodius was lawful and in self-defense, Clodius, on the other hand, had been distinctly absent from his usual rantings in the popular assemblies. Milo was encumbered in a coach, with his wife, a riding cloak. Clodius, however, was on horseback not with a carriage, his wife or his usual retinue but with a band of armed brigands, if Cicero could convince the judges that Clodius had laid a trap for Milo, he could postulate that Milo murdered out of self-defense. Cicero never even mentions the possibility that the two met by chance, the conclusion of both Asconius and Appian, Clodius is made out repeatedly in the Pro Milone to be a malevolent, invidious, effeminate character who craves power and organises the ambush on Milo
Pro Milone
–
Cicero at about the age of 60, from an ancient marble bust
Pro Milone
–
Treatises
25.
In Toga Candida
–
In Toga Candida is a speech given by Cicero during his election campaign in 64 BC for the consulship of 63 BC. The speech was directed at his competitors, Catilina and Antonius, the speech no longer survives, though a commentary on it written by Asconius does survive. The speech is called Oratio in Toga Candida since candidates wore specially whitened togas, Cicero used his election campaign speech to denounce his rivals and hint at secret powers behind Catiline. The tactics were successful and he secured the consulship, the First Catilinarian Conspiracy, A further re-examination of the evidence Fragments of the speech and more information
In Toga Candida
–
Treatises
26.
Servius
–
These works, In tria Virgilii Opera Expositio, constituted the first incunable to be printed at Florence, by Bernardo Cennini,1471. In the Saturnalia of Macrobius, Servius appears as one of the interlocutors, allusions in that work, the commentary on Virgil has survived in two distinct manuscript traditions. The first is a short commentary, which is attributed to Servius in the superscription in the manuscripts. A second class of manuscripts, all deriving from the 10th and 11th centuries, the added matter is undoubtedly ancient, dating from a time but little removed from that of Servius, and is founded to a large extent on historical and antiquarian literature which is now lost. The writer is anonymous and probably a Christian, although not if, as is often suggested, a third class of manuscripts, written for the most part in Italy, gives the core text with interpolated scholia, which demonstrate the continued usefulness of the Virgilii Opera Expositio. The authentic commentary of Maurus Servius Honoratus is in effect the only complete extant edition of a classic author written before the collapse of the Empire in the West, Servius set his face against the prevalent allegorical methods of exposition of text. For the antiquarian and the historian, the value of his work lies in his preservation of facts in Roman history, religion, antiquities and language. Not a little of the erudition of Varro and other ancient scholars has survived in his pages. The edition of Georg Thilo and Hermann Hagen, remains the only edition of the whole of Servius work. Currently in development is the Harvard Servius, of the five volumes. E. K. Rand, Is Donatuss Commentary on Virgil Lost, Donatuss authorship of the supplementary material. Servio, stratificazioni esegetiche e modelli culturali / Servius, exegetical stratifications, Latin Wikisource has original text related to this article, Maurus Servius Honoratus Commentary on the Aeneid of Virgil is at the Perseus Project in Latin. De Centum Metris at Intratext. com De Centum Metris at Forum Romanorum Servii grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii carmina commentarii, Georius Thilo, lipsiae in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1881-1902, vol. 2, vol.3 part 1, vol.3 part 2
Servius
–
Servius commenting Virgil (France, 15th century).
Servius
–
16th century edition of Virgil with Servius' commentary printed to the left of the text.
27.
Aeneid
–
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It comprises 9,896 lines in dactylic hexameter, the hero Aeneas was already known to Greco-Roman legend and myth, having been a character in the Iliad. The Aeneid is widely regarded as Virgils masterpiece and one of the greatest works of Latin literature, the Aeneid can be divided into two halves based on the disparate subject matter of Books 1–6 and Books 7–12. These two halves are commonly regarded as reflecting Virgils ambition to rival Homer by treating both the Odysseys wandering theme and the Iliads warfare themes and this is, however, a rough correspondence, the limitations of which should be borne in mind. Virgil begins his poem with a statement of his theme and an invocation to the Muse and he then explains the reason for the principal conflict in the story, the resentment held by the goddess Juno against the Trojan people. This is consistent with her throughout the Homeric epics. Also in the manner of Homer, the story begins in medias res, with the Trojan fleet in the eastern Mediterranean. The fleet, led by Aeneas, is on a voyage to find a second home and it has been foretold that in Italy, he will give rise to a race both noble and courageous, a race which will become known to all nations. Juno is wrathful, because she had not been chosen in the judgment of Paris, also, Ganymede, a Trojan prince, was chosen to be the cup bearer to her husband, Jupiter—replacing Junos daughter, Hebe. Juno proceeds to Aeolus, King of the Winds, and asks that he release the winds to stir up a storm in exchange for a bribe, Aeolus does not accept the bribe, but agrees to carry out Junos orders, the storm then devastates the fleet. The fleet takes shelter on the coast of Africa, where Aeneas rouses the spirits of his men, There, Aeneass mother, Venus, in the form of a hunting woman very similar to the goddess Diana, encourages him and recounts to him the history of Carthage. At a banquet given in honour of the Trojans, Aeneas sadly recounts the events that occasioned the Trojans arrival. He begins the tale shortly after the war described in the Iliad, Cunning Ulysses devised a way for Greek warriors to gain entry into the walled city of Troy by hiding in a large wooden horse. The Greeks pretended to sail away, leaving a warrior, Sinon, to inform the Trojans that the horse was an offering and that if it were taken into the city, the Trojans would be able to conquer Greece. The Trojan priest Laocoön saw through the Greek plot and urged the horses destruction, then, in what would be seen by the Trojans as punishment from the gods, two serpents emerged from the sea and devoured Laocoön, along with his two sons. The Trojans then took the horse inside the walls, and after nightfall the armed Greeks emerged from it. In a dream, Hector, the fallen Trojan prince, advised Aeneas to flee with his family, Aeneas awoke and saw with horror what was happening to his beloved city. At first he tried to fight the enemy, but soon he lost his comrades and was alone to fend off the Greeks
Aeneid
–
Aeneas Flees Burning Troy,
Federico Barocci, 1598
Galleria Borghese, Rome
Aeneid
–
Paul Cézanne, Aneas Meeting Dido at Carthage, ca. 1875,
Princeton University Art Museum
Aeneid
–
The suicide of
Queen Dido (book 4), sculpture by Claude-Augustin Cayot (fr) (1667–1722)
Aeneid
–
Boxing scene from the Aeneid (book 5), mosaic floor from a Gallo-Roman villa in
Villelaure (France), ca. 175 AD,
Getty Villa (71.AH.106)
28.
Macrobius
–
Only in later manuscripts were his names reversed as Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius, which James Willis then adopted for his edition of the Commentary. Little is known for certain about Macrobius, but there are many theories and he states at the beginning of his Saturnalia that he was born under a foreign sky, and both of his major works are dedicated to his son, Eustachius. His major works have led experts to assume that he was a pagan, which foreign sky Macrobius was born under has been the subject of much speculation. Terrot Glover considers Macrobius either an ethnic Greek, or born in one of the Greek-speaking parts of the Roman Empire, such as Egypt, J. E. Sandys went further and argued that Macrobius was born in one of the Greek provinces. Scholars have attempted to identify him with a Macrobius who is mentioned in the Codex Theodosianus as a prefect of Spain. The Codex Theodosianus also records a praepositus named Macrobius in 422, a number of older authorities go so far as to identify Macrobius the author with the first, and date his floruit to 399–410. Further, Cameron points out that during his lifetime Macrobius was referred to as Theodosius and it is significant that the only surviving law addressed to this Theodosius sanctions a privilege for Africa Proconsularis on the basis of information received concerning Byzacena, Cameron notes. Macrobiuss most influential one of the most widely cited books of the Middle Ages—was a commentary in two books on the Dream of Scipio narrated by Cicero at the end of his Republic. In astronomy, this work is noted for giving the diameter of the Sun as twice the diameter of the Earth. Of a third work On the Differences and Similarities of the Greek and Latin Verb, we possess an abstract by a certain Johannes. See editions by Ludwig von Jan, Franz Eyssenhardt, James Willis, the grammatical treatise will be found in Jans edition and Heinrich Keils Grammatici latini, see also Georg Friedrich Schömann, Commentatio macrobiana. Macrobiuss Saturnalia consists of an account of the held at the house of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus during the holiday of the Saturnalia. It contains a variety of curious historical, mythological, critical, antiquarian. The work takes the form of a series of dialogues among learned men at a fictional banquet. The latter part of the book is taken up with a dissertation upon luxury and the sumptuary laws intended to check it. The seventh book consists largely of the discussion of various physiological questions, the primary value of the work lies in the facts and opinions quoted from earlier writers. Cambridge, MA/ London, Harvard University Press,2011, percival Vaughan Davies, Macrobius, The Saturnalia. New York, Columbia University Press,1969, william Harris Stahl, Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio
Macrobius
–
Macrobius presenting his work to his son Eustachius. From an 1100 copy of Macrobius'
Dream of Scipio.
Macrobius
–
Early printed edition of Macrobius's Somnium Scipionis and Saturnalia.
Macrobius
–
Initial E shaped in the form of a writing man, probably representing Macrobius himself.
Macrobius
–
The Universe, the Earth in the centre, surrounded by the seven planets within the zodiacal signs.
29.
Dream of Scipio
–
Upon his arrival in Africa, a guest at the court of Massinissa, Scipio Aemilianus is visited by his dead grandfather, Scipio Africanus, hero of the Second Punic War. He finds himself looking down upon Carthage from a place full of stars, shining. Nevertheless, Scipio Aemilianus sees that Rome is an insignificant part of the earth, the planetary spheres are enumerated with references to Pythagorean thought and the idea of the Music of the Spheres. Then the climatic belts of the earth are observed, from the fields to the deserts, and there is discussion of the nature of the Divine. The literary and philosophical influence of the Somnium was great, Macrobius commented on it in his Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, which in turn was an important source for medieval dream theory. The tale is modelled on The Myth of Er in Platos Republic, although the story of Er records a near-death experience, while the journey of Scipios disembodied soul takes place in a dream, both give examples of belief in astral projection. Macrobius Commentary upon Scipios Dream was known to the sixth-century philosopher Boethius, the work assumed the astrological cosmos formulated by Claudius Ptolemy. Chretien de Troyes referred to Macrobius work in his first Arthurian romance, Erec, chaucer referred to the work in The Nuns Priests Tale and especially in the Parlement of Foules. Some critics consider Raphaels painting Vision of a Knight to be a depiction of Scipios Dream, the composer Mozart, at the age of fifteen, wrote a short opera entitled Il sogno di Scipione based upon Scipio Aemilianuss soul-journey through the cosmos. Iain Pears wrote a novel called The Dream of Scipio which refers to Ciceros work in various direct and indirect ways. This story is the basis for Chris McCullys poem Scipios Dream from his collection Not Only I, images from a 12th-century manuscript of Macrobius Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis. Source, Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, ms, Somnium Scipionis The Dream of Scipio
Dream of Scipio
–
Scipio Africanus the Elder, who in Cicero's story appears to his grandson and tells him of the universe and his destiny.
Dream of Scipio
–
The Universe, the Earth in the centre, surrounded by the seven planets within the zodiacal signs.
Dream of Scipio
–
Initial E shaped in the form of a writing man, probably representing Macrobius himself.
Dream of Scipio
–
The five
climes of the Earth. Frozen climes in yellow; Temperate climes in blue; Torrid clime in red.
30.
Plato
–
Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He is widely considered the most pivotal figure in the development of philosophy, unlike nearly all of his philosophical contemporaries, Platos entire work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his most famous student, Aristotle, Plato laid the foundations of Western philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead once noted, the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. In addition to being a figure for Western science, philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche, amongst other scholars, called Christianity, Platonism for the people, Plato was the innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy, which originate with him. He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word “philosopher” should be applied, few other authors in the history of Western philosophy approximate him in depth and range, perhaps only Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank. Due to a lack of surviving accounts, little is known about Platos early life, the philosopher came from one of the wealthiest and most politically active families in Athens. Ancient sources describe him as a bright though modest boy who excelled in his studies, the exact time and place of Platos birth are unknown, but it is certain that he belonged to an aristocratic and influential family. Based on ancient sources, most modern scholars believe that he was born in Athens or Aegina between 429 and 423 BCE. According to a tradition, reported by Diogenes Laertius, Ariston traced his descent from the king of Athens, Codrus. Platos mother was Perictione, whose family boasted of a relationship with the famous Athenian lawmaker, besides Plato himself, Ariston and Perictione had three other children, these were two sons, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a daughter Potone, the mother of Speusippus. The brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon are mentioned in the Republic as sons of Ariston, and presumably brothers of Plato, but in a scenario in the Memorabilia, Xenophon confused the issue by presenting a Glaucon much younger than Plato. Then, at twenty-eight, Hermodorus says, went to Euclides in Megara, as Debra Nails argues, The text itself gives no reason to infer that Plato left immediately for Megara and implies the very opposite. Thus, Nails dates Platos birth to 424/423, another legend related that, when Plato was an infant, bees settled on his lips while he was sleeping, an augury of the sweetness of style in which he would discourse about philosophy. Ariston appears to have died in Platos childhood, although the dating of his death is difficult. Perictione then married Pyrilampes, her mothers brother, who had served many times as an ambassador to the Persian court and was a friend of Pericles, Pyrilampes had a son from a previous marriage, Demus, who was famous for his beauty. Perictione gave birth to Pyrilampes second son, Antiphon, the half-brother of Plato and these and other references suggest a considerable amount of family pride and enable us to reconstruct Platos family tree
Plato
–
Plato: copy of portrait bust by
Silanion
Plato
–
Plato from
The School of Athens by
Raphael, 1509
Plato
–
Plato and
Socrates in a medieval depiction
Plato
–
Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of
The School of Athens, a fresco by
Raphael. Aristotle gestures to the earth, representing his belief in knowledge through empirical observation and experience, while holding a copy of his
Nicomachean Ethics in his hand. Plato holds his
Timaeus and gestures to the heavens, representing his belief in
The Forms
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Scholium". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
