Studia Humaniora Tartuensia

A.1. Aristotle On Poets: a critical evaluation of Richard Janko's edition of the fragments

2019-06-14T14:38:25+00:00

This paper provides a critical examination of Richard Janko’s edition of the fragments of Aristotle On Poets (Janko 2011). Section 1 discusses passages preserved in late ancient texts which Janko assigns to On Poets. Section 2 identifies problems in the evidence preserved in the Philodemus papyri. Section 3 assesses indirect evidence for Aristotle’s theory of katharsis, and considers two contested points in Aristotle’s discussion of katharsis in Politics 8: the meaning of mousikē, and the nature of his response to the challenge posed by Plato in Republic 10.

A.2. Stolen fire: Aeschylean imagery and Thoreau’s identification of the Graius homo of Lucretius with Prometheus

2019-06-12T14:34:00+00:00

In his Journal for April 26, 1856, Thoreau noted that he had quickly looked over the first 200 lines of the De Rerum Natura but was “…struck only with the lines referring to Promethius (sic)—whose vivida vis animi…extra/processit longe flammantia moenia mundi.” (1.72–73) During this time (i.e., late April and into May) Thoreau was reading the Roman agricultural writers Columella and Palladius, and it is unclear what led him to pick up the De Rerum Natura and then discard it so quickly. Perhaps most curious is Thoreau’s comment that lines 72–73 refer to Prometheus. No commentator in the context of Thoreau has noted that Lucretius is not actually referring to Prometheus in these lines but to Epicurus. The goal of this paper is to show how these lines in their wording and imagery may have reminded Thoreau of Aeschylus’ description of Prometheus in Prometheus Bound and led him to conclude that lines 1.72–73 of the De Rerum Natura refer to Prometheus.

R.1. Barris, Joan Silva (2011), Metre and Rhythm in Greek Verse. (Wiener Studien, Beiheft 35.) Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. 177 p. ISBN 9783700169024.

2019-06-12T14:34:00+00:00