Lampas - Volume 53, Issue 1, 2020

Summary This article investigates the internal structure of ἔρως, as it is conceptualized in Plato’s Symposium. The analysis first focuses on the three constitutive elements of love on the lover’s side: a lack, a consciousness of it, and the perceived worth of what is lacking. It explores these in relation to the rest of the Symposium and to the Socratic elenchus. The second part of the analysis turns to the beloved’s end of the rel Read More

Summary In the Aeneid, the recurrent themes of ‘construction’ and ‘destruction’ (the topic of the Latin final exam of 2020) can be connected to generic roles. Dido, founder of Carthage, is presented progressively in elegiac terms, as is suggested by a number of echoes of Sapphic love poetry; as a character, she is guided primarily by personal motives. Dido’s ‘elegiac role’ forebodes her own destruction and that of her c Read More

Summary On the basis of a broad perspective on theatricality and tragedy in imperial Rome this article argues that theatrical and tragic elements play an important role in the episode on the death of Nero’s mother Agrippina in Tacitus’ Annals 14.1-10. These elements fall into three categories: 1) theatricality, 2) generic, tragic elements and 3) allusions to specific tragic texts. These evocations of the (tragic) stage serve to under Read More

Summary This article examines the long feud between ancient historians Moses Finley and Joseph Vogt on the subject of ancient slavery. Their enmity has often been attributed to differences in character or in political views. However, it is shown here that Finley’s attack was above all directed against the tradition of classical Bildung (the German ideal of self-cultivation) and against the corresponding philosophy of histo Read More

Summary In this contribution the authors of the new Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek outline their views on the need for a new Greek reference grammar, discuss their methodological and organizational principles, and offer some thoughts on how the book may be used as a teaching resource.