Lampas - Volume 51, Issue 3, 2018

Summary

The story about Odysseus and Polyphemus in Odysseybook 9 is an exciting one: men trapped in a giant cannibal’s cave, followed by a spectacular exit. This story becomes even more exciting when we carefully analyse its structure and narratological techniques. Such an analysis quickly makes clear that this story is more than just a story. It foreshadows the struggle Odysseus will have to undertake in the second half of the Odyssey,when he has returned home on Ithaca and finally faces the suitors. Homer’s story about Odysseus and Polyphemus inspired many authors in later times, both Greek and Latin. At the end of this article one of these stories, Euripides’ Cyclops, will be briefly examined.

Summary

In 2000, a lead curse tablet was found in Bodegraven, at or near the site of a small Roman fort on the southern bank of the river Rhine. The text was first examined and interpreted by Jan Kees Haalebos (Haalebos and Polak 2007), who recognized a list of 21 personal names and the first word of a closing formula of four short lines. In the present article a drawing of the tablet is published for the first time and a new reading of the text is proposed. The list of names is reduced to 20 and alternative readings are introduced for some of the names. Subsequently, an interpretation is presented for the incompletely preserved closing lines. The resulting text uses standard formulae, all well-known from other curse tablets. For the first time, however, we find the word extererein the context of a curse, used in the ‘wish formula’ directed against the intended victims.

Summary

Modern

visitors to Mycenae, which will include many classicists, are likely to wonder in amazement at the enormous stone blocks which were piled up to construct the enclosure walls, and may well pause at the Lion Gate to imagine Agamemnon leaving the citadel on his fateful journey to Troy. Modern tourists are but the most recent of generations of travelers who have made their way to this celebrated site since Antiquity. All of these visitors need to find a way to connect their mythological knowledge to the physical remains which they encounter. This article explores the tensions that exist between literary and mythical, and archaeological and material perspectives on ancient Mycenae. By examining the various ways in which visitors have attempted to make sense of the site we aim to provide a more nuanced archaeological interpretation of the ruins and their settings. We argue that meanings emerge from the interplay of mythologies and archaeological remains which are actively connected to each other.

Summary

This article discusses the ineffective dictionary use by school pupils while translating Latin and Greek texts. Although widely acknowledged by teachers as problematic, surprisingly little research has been done on the subject. We do know that pupils show excessive lookup behaviour, which suggests that they consider the use of their dictionary as the most important ‘strategy’ for understanding authentic texts. Education in Latin and Greek, however, does not offer a structural dictionary instruction. This article hopes to pave the way for designing such an instruction by further analysing problematic dictionary behaviour among pupils. First, it offers an analysis of five factors of ineffective dictionary behaviour, based on literature and the outcomes of a focus group of teachers. Second, by including Cognitive Load Theory, the article explains these factors in terms of cognitive (over)load. This theory shows that each of the five factors is a symptom of ‘extraneous’ cognitive load. To be effective, dictionary behaviour should be directly related to the task and contribute to so-called schema development and automation. The article concludes with several suggestions for didactic activities to point pupils’ dictionary behaviour in the right direction.

Summary

This article provides an example of how to read Cicero’s early speech in defence of Sextus Roscius junior according to the positional reading method. This reading method is based on a colometric reading of Latin texts and emphasizes the tension between the neutral word order and the word order that was chosen by the author. This tension is made visible for students and their teachers by a scheme that shows the fixed order of content positions in Latin sentences and offers a new perspective on the content of Latin texts.

Summary

This

brief contribution contains an overview of recent translations and (introductory) literature that can be useful in studying the Herodotus passages that have been selected for the high school exam ancient Greek in 2019. These revolve around the theme of tyranny (e.g. Polycrates, Periander, Gelon of Syracuse), but also include Herodotus’ story about the emergence of the Athenian democracy as a major power within the ancient world.