Lampas - Volume 54, Issue 3, 2021

Abstract Starting from the story of Iphidamas in Iliad 11, this article argues that the presentation of war in the Iliad and Odyssey is mostly negative, with strong emphasis on its many victims and the suffering and losses on both sides. Within this context, the idea of κλέος (‘fame’) is found mainly as a motivation to join the war or to engage in the fighting. The victims’ family and friends do not find comfort in it, as we can see very c Read More

Abstract The famous letters by Pliny the Younger and emperor Trajan about the Christian community of Bithynia-Pontus have traditionally been highly significant in the study of early Christianity. However, the letters have often been read in isolation. The rest of the correspondence between emperor and governor contained in the tenth book of Pliny’s Epistulae, meanwhile, has rarely been taken into account in a systematic w Read More

Abstract This article studies the reception of the comedies of the Athenian playwright Aristophanes in 12th-century Byzantium. It takes as its starting point various scholarly and didactic texts that facilitated this reception. These texts were written by Gregory of Corinth, John Tzetzes and Eustathius of Thessaloniki, who all used Aristophanes, and ancient literature more generally, in their teaching and scholarly practice. Thi Read More

Abstract In the period from about 1890 to 1960, there was a widespread belief that a universal language would make an important contribution to both material progress and international understanding. Alongside artificial languages such as Esperanto and national languages such as English and French, for a long time Latin also received serious attention as a potential world language of the future. This article provides an anal Read More