University of Alberta
Despite its perceived shortcoming as a history, Xenophon's Hellenica is a surprisingly effective moral document, demonstrating how proper ethical behaviour can lead to both political and military success. It is not Xenophon's usual practice, however, to comment explicitly upon moral or immoral actions, and so his methods of moral instruction are often subtle indeed. In fact, his preferred method of teaching virtue is by example. In this way, Xenophon is able to illustrate in a concrete fashion how individuals who are virtuous meet with success in their endeavours, while those who commit moral faults meet eventually with their just deserts. Furthermore, Xenophon appears to have believed that human right moral conduct is reinforced by the supernatural.
Often, natural phenomena, which are not brought about by human agency but are attributable to some supernatural force, prevent those with moral faults from obtaining victory, or worse. For this reason, we find a thunderstorm contributing to the destruction of the Spartan commander Callicratidas (1.6.28-33) and an unexpected snowstorm protecting Thrasybulus and his followers from an attack by the Thirty (2.4.3 and 14). Paying heed to the results of natural phenomena as an indication of right moral conduct bears fruit for the Spartan king Agis in his campaign against Elis (3.2.21-26), the survivors of a massacre at Corinth in gaining revenge against their enemies (4.4.5-12), and the Spartan king Agesipolis in his expedition against Argos (4.7.2-7). These natural phenomena appear to be communications from the gods, designed to aid the virtuous against the wicked. In fact, Xenophon's chief use of natural phenomena seems to be as a kind of reinforcement of the recurrent theme throughout the Hellenica that moral offenses eventually result in the destruction of the guilty.
University of Victoria
As the vocabulary of the modern Romance languages so richly testifies, diminutive forms were abundantly present in Latin dialects of the common people. This had been true since the third century B.C., when Plautus began his pioneer efforts to adapt Greek comedy for the Roman stage. No other Latin poet or prose writer shows as rich a stock of diminutives as Plautus. In part, this is because his comedies were designed as popular entertainment, and thus reflect colloquial Latin speech patterns of his day. More than that, however, Plautus was an inveterate word-coiner, and sought often to amuse his audience by inventing new forms of diminutive, some of them bizarre and preposterous. This paper will attempt a classification and analysis of the Plautine diminutive, with particular emphasis on the various comic purposes for which each type is employed.
University of Saskatchewan
In AD 6, as Tiberius Caesar was on the very point of invading the Marcomannic kingdom of Maroboduus, a great rebellion flared up behind him in Dalmatia and Pannonia that took four campaigns (6-9), a massive concentration of Roman forces, and all of Tiberius' strategic acumen and experience to suppress.
The last of Tiberius' campaigns, fought against rebel forces which had withdrawn into fortress Bosnia in winter 8/9, is reported at length by our main historical sources, Velleius Paterculus and Cassius Dio. They describe divers operations conducted by Tiberius, his legates, and the young Germanicus against a resourceful enemy in baffling mountain terrain, culminating in the capture of Andetrium, near Salonae on the Adriatic, and the surrender of the Dalmatian leader Bato, who was later led in Tiberius' triumph.
For anyone seeking to comprehend the strategies of the Roman commander and his adversary in 9, a main problem is how to combine the topography, including the Bosnian landscape, with the testimony of Velleius and Dio, who both knew the region well. My paper, which builds on work of Syme, Koestermann, Alföldy, and Wilkes, offers a fresh reading of the evidence and proposes some revision in the standard accounts of Roman and rebel operations. In particular, it seeks to bring in doubt the widely held view that Tiberius used a characteristic pincer attack to hem the rebels in between Roman forces advancing southward from the direction of Pannonia and northward from the Adriatic coast.
University of Calgary
Corinth was a Roman colony refounded by Julius Caesar in 44 BC on the site of the ancient Greek city destroyed by Mummius a century earlier. The new city was Roman in layout, in political organization, official language and religion, but it also inherited the traditions of one of the most important cultural centres of classical Greece. The complex interaction of Greek and Roman influences is the subject of this paper.
Coinage is a subtle, and often overlooked, source of evidence. Corinth was an important provincial mint city during the early Empire, coining frequently and in substantial quantity. My primary purpose is to examine the typology to see what light it throws upon the changing character of the city and the extent to which Greek values and influences affected the Roman make-up of the colony, particularly during the Second Sophistic, that self-conscious cultural revival of Greek civilization and values initiated by Hadrian in the 2nd century.
Reverse types of the 1st century indicate primarily that Corinth was a Roman colony; this identity is retained, but modified, as Corinth becomes increasingly eager to acknowledge a classical past, both real and imaginary, in which local cults and legends play an important part, even to the extent of developing artificial, founding myths. There remains, however, a strong Augustan connection. It appears that Corinth retained its Roman identity, contrary to the view of many classical scholars, while becoming a member of the Panhellenion and a part of that peculiarly Roman world, the union of East and West, which gradually evolved into the Graeco-Roman world of the 2nd century AD.
University of British Columbia
Since 1983 the University of British Columbia has been carrying out archaeological investigations at Mytilene, chief city of the island of Lesbos. Funded by the SSHRCC, the University of BC and private donors the project has not only uncovered a variety of different sites and structures but has also surveyed the large Roman quarries at nearby Moria. This paper will briefly review our most important discoveries (including work to be carried out in 1995) and put them in the context of current work in the Aegean. From the acropolis we have a sanctuary of Demeter and Kore while from the North Harbour area we have rich levels from the 6th c. B.C. to Turkish times, including a large Hellenistic dump with debris from different industrial activities, part of the city wall, and remains of a well preserved Roman peristyle building.
University of Ottawa
It has long been suspected that Pompeius Trogus was influenced by Livy, his contemporary. In Book 38 of his Epitome of Trogus, Justin tells us that Trogus criticised Livy for using direct speech for the speeches attributed to his characters, which indicates that he had read the work of the great historian of Rome. This paper examines the language of Justin/Trogus, identifying expressions which appear to be Trogan usages, derived ultimately from Livy.
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