Wiener Studien ‒ Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie, Patristik und lateinische Tradition, Band 124/2011

Pindar composed splendid victory odes for Sicilian tyrants, but his statement „I disapprove of the fate of tyrannies“ tells us nothing about his attitude towards Hieron or Theron. In its context in the 11th Pythian, it is a comment on the fate of Agamemnon, Klytaimestra and Aigisthos. The poet supplied what his clients commissioned and paid for – it was essentially a business relationship. Pindar’s praise for Hieron und Theron is measured, not flattery; they were not power-greedy despots like Hieron II, Dionysios or Agathokles, let alone the dictators of the 20th and 21st centuries.

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This paper scrutinizes a textually corrupted passage in Aischylos (Choeph. 283 – 290). The main difficulty lies in verse 285, which cannot be understood in its given form and place. Therefore many scholars have assumed the loss of one or more verses after 284, others resorted to transposing the controversial line. I will argue for a combination of this two methods proposing a new solution, which makes the corruption paleographically likely and gives a new sense to the thus healed passage: It is the dark look of the Erinyes, described as their sharp weapon, which wreaks havoc upon Orestes.

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The stage performance of the ‘palace miracle’ has been a major question in contemporary research. While the interest has so far focused on the palace as an edifice and on the effect the natural disaster has on it, this essay rather deals with the chorus’ role during the earthquake: the stage directions, the choreography and the careful use of the language, combined with the comparison of this episode with similar scenes in Prometheus Bound and Heracles, leads to the conclusion that Euripides involves artistically the chorus and its mimetic movements so as to represent a difficult scene in a most persuasive way.

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The paper offers an interpretation of a rather intriguing chapter of the Hippocratic treatise De victu. The author argues that the human constitutions described in De victu 1, 32 are to be regarded in the metaphysical and anthropological context of Book I of the treatise, according to which everything can be reduced to two elements (fire and water) and four properties (warm, dry, cold, wet).

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The factors of ‘place/space’ and ‘philosophical instruction’ both shape the specific points of Epictetus’ gender discourse. The place/space gives rise to a hierarchic situation of teaching exclusively young boys of the upper class, but no women, it creates a distance from home that is a test for the boys’ developing manlihood, and it relocates the philosophical ideal of masculinity in two literary quotations from the Iliad and Plato’s Phaedo. Philosophical instruction, however, is more important in shaping Epictetus’ gender discourse. Emotional behaviour is stigmatized as effeminate, which is an efficious rhetoric device to convince the young boys in the audience, but does not imply or go along with essentialistic discrimination concerning women’s rational abilities. This pragmatic use of gender stereotypes is due to the strong insistence on conviction which Epictetus shows in comparison with his teacher Musonius Rufus and corresponds to Epictetus’ caustic style of teaching which follows the Cynics’ example.

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The encomiastic orations in Choricius’ corpus (orr. I –VIII F. -R.) represent a vivid witness of 6th century Gaza in Palestine. My work aims to describe some aspects of culture and ideology through the portraits of some outstanding members of the local leading class, who tend to be offered as exemplar figures: the bishop (I/II), two city leaders (III/IV), some students (V/VI), an aging aristocratic woman (VII), a professor of rhetoric (VIII). That is why it is possible to discover, by the analysis of the topoi of the encomium in its different patterns and behind them, the values the author shared with his late antique audience and their cultural common expectations.

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The metre primarily used for Byzantine poetry is the so called dodecasyllable which has its origin in the ancient and late antique iambic trimetre. The first author who used the dodecasyllable extensively for his poems was Georgios Pisides (1st half 7th century A. D.). However, the development towards the dodecasyllable is to be observed much earlier. “Dodecasyllable” verses do not only occur in the 6th century A. D. – as is stated in the previous literature – but already in earlier periods which is demonstrated by several examples of (primarily inscribed) epigrams from the late Hellenistic era up to the year 600 A. D. Whereas within the poems of Pisides we still find solutions and anapests, in later centuries these phenomena hardly occur; a specific section within the article is devoted to the (rare) use of the ancient/late antique iambic trimetre (with solutions and anapests) in the middle Byzantine period.

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In Horace’s epistle to Augustus the motif of the laughing Democritus takes a striking shape. The Roman poet transfers the Greek pre-Socratic into his own time and space. Moreover, he has the philosopher visit a theater where the audience itself causes his characteristic behavior, and not the presented spectacle. These specifics, which are full of implications, are deliberately developed by Juvenal, who in his tenth satire presents the Democritus ridens for the second time in Roman poetry and prefers him to the crying Heraclitus.

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A brief examination of some indicative examples of the technique that Seneca normally uses to enter poetic citations in his philosophical works leads to the conclusion that he often deliberately integrates into his text the quotation’s original context. On this basis I will try to prove that a verse quotation of uncertain authorship in the preface of De brevitate vitae (dial. 10, 2, 1/2) was originally part of the chorus of soldiers from Ennius’ tragedy Iphigenia (Enn. scaen. 195 – 202J), and that Seneca, in composing this preface, had at his disposal the original Ennian context in its entirety.

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This paper explores the concept ‘trope’ in the text of Augustine. After preliminary remarks on tropus, first, I analyse Augustine’s theory of sign in the second part of De magistro where Augustine defines the sign as a unit consisting of the signifier and the signified and illustrates the pragmatic conditions under which a signifier is interpreted as a sign. Second, I point out that according to the pragmatic dimension of Augustine’s biblical hermeneutics the reference of the biblical texts to the regula fidei is essential to the distinction between the literal and the figurative or tropical meaning and consequently to the extension of ‘trope’ which Augustine describes as meaning one thing in saying another. Third, I explain the tradition, the logical principles, and the classification of the tropes which are found in Augustine. Finally, the paper sheds light on the importance of the knowledge of trope to the biblical exegesis.

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This article presents a sermon on Matth. 7, 7 – 11 (or Luc. 11, 9 – 13), which was ascribed to Caesarius of Arles because it is attested in a description of the nowadays lost Collectio Longipontana compiled by him. A thorough examination of language and style, thoughts and argumentation as well as the manuscript tradition proves that this sermon is an authentic work of Augustine of Hippo (Sermo 61B). The final section gives a critical edition which is based on six manuscripts.

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In reply to a review in Medioevo Latino (2008) of an article published in the 2007 volume of the Recherches Augustiniennes et Patristiques, the present article proves that two medieval homiletical compilations that have been preserved in Bruxelles Bibl. Roy. 14920 – 22 and Vat. lat. 471/London Brit. Libr. add. 10942 and that were used by Angelo Mai, Germain Morin and André Wilmart for the publication of several previously unknown sermons of saint Augustine, were both produced at Cluny. It also refutes the hypothesis according to which the compilation preserved in the manuscripts of the Vatican and London was made in Carolingian Lyon by the famous deacon Florus.

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The late-antiquity libellus known as Cena Cypriani (Cena) represents an odd form of intellectual and perhaps convivial entertainment, wherein readers and listeners are made aware of biblical episodes through its story. Literarily, the Cena can be considered as a unique result arising from the mixture of Greek and Latin works from both the Classical era and Late Antiquity. Only during the Early Middle Ages, such work was attributed to Saint Cyprian and, for this reason, began circulating in the Carthaginian martyr’s body of writings. Nevertheless, the fate of this Early Medieval script is not connected solely to the auctoritas Cypriani. Indeed, the Cena circulated in the Carolingian scriptoria as disputatio, used as a means of teaching the Bible while also helping to amuse its readers and listeners. During Charles the Bald’s imperial coronation (875), the Cena was required to be read in Rome, where most likely it was unknown to the public. Subsequently, John Inmonides transformed the text into a well known rhythm composed for the convivial entertainment of the Carolingian sovereign and that of Pope John VIII.

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