Classics

Apart from its use as a manner adverb with full lexical meaning ('in a healthy, sensible way'), Latin sane is used as a discourse particle that is traditionally associated in grammars of Latin with a number of seemingly unconnected functions. In this paper I propose a more unified account, in which its various discourse functions are described on the basis of a threestage analysis, which distinguishes between a relatively abstract basic meaning ('positive evaluation'), the domains or discourse levels to which this particle may pertain, and discourse pragmatic properties of the utterances in which sane is used. Special attention is devoted to the alleged use of sane as a concessive marker. I argue that, in the instances involved, sane is not in itself a concessive marker, but is used in the first part of a paratactic concessive constellation to mark the speaker's (restricted) agreement with a speech act that is attributed to a real or imaginary interlocutor. The paper starts with a more theoretical discussion of the approach to discourse particles on which my account of sane is based. The concluding section contains a number of diachronic observations on the development of the various discourse functions from each other and from the use of sane as a manner adverb.

In a way, this special issue on 'discourse markers' is a sequel to the special issue on 'particles' edited by Anna Wierzbicka, Journal of Pragmatics 10(5), which appeared more than a decade ago (1986). The groups of phenomena to which these two terms refer have much in common. Both belong to a wider category of 'pragmatic function words', which share as a basic characteristic that they do not convey propositional meaning but fulfill other, more procedural functions, and there is also a certain overlap between the phenomena involved. In spite of this overlap, however, the recent popularity of the term discourse marker involves more than a mere change of terminology. It also represents a difference in approach. Research on particles, of which Germany formed an important centre in the seventies and eighties (cf. e.g. Weydt, 1969, and the series of volumes edited by Weydt, 1977, 1979, 1983, 1989) tends to be predominantly semantic in nature. 1 It concentrates predominantly on scalar particles and on modal particles (Abt~Snungspartikeln), the functions of which are analyzed in terms of the attitudes and expectations of the speaker with respect to the propositional content and/or illocutionary force of single utterances. Research on discourse markers, on the other hand, which started more than a decade later on the basis of English and French discourse (see e.g. Schiffrin, 1987; Roulet et al., 1985; but cf. also the pioneering studies by Van Dijk, 1977, 1979), is predominantly oriented on discourse analysis. A methodological corrolary of this orientation is the prevalent use of corpus based data. A characteristic which most approaches to discourse markers have in common, and which forms also one of the recurrent themes in the contributions to this special issue, is the key role that is attributed to coherence relations. The basic assumption is that discourse (a term which covers both spoken and written text) does not consist * Corresponding author. Fax: +31 13 466 31 10. This is, of course, not to say that (discourse) pragmatic aspects are disregarded, or that there are no particle studies that are predominantly or even radically pragmatic (cf. e.g. Franck, 1980). In her introduction to the special issue on particles, Wierzbicka (1986) presents a useful characterization of a number of different approaches to particles.

at the age of 79. He was a world leading expert in the study of Latin linguistics, and from 1992 to 2007 one of the driving forces behind Mnemosyne. Harm Pinkster was born in Emmen on 5 March 1942, and grew up in a working-class family in the recently reclaimed 'new land' of the Noordoostpolder. Thanks to his elementary school teacher, who recognized his extraordinary talents, and partly also to fortune's aid, he ended up at the gymnasium, where he not only excelled in science subjects, but also developed a strong interest in classical languages. His love of Latin and Geek won out over his interest in the exact sciences, and brought him to Amsterdam, where in 1960 he started his study in Classics. Although his immense eagerness for acquiring and exchanging knowledge would lead him to many renowned universities and research institutes all over the world, his scientific career always remained closely tied to the University of Amsterdam: after his graduation in 1967, he completed his PhD there in 1971, was appointed as 'lector in Latin linguistics as well as Italian dialects' in the very same year, and held the chair of Latin linguistics (later on Latin linguistics and literature) from 1980 until 1996, when he became vice-rector until his retirement in 2004. This retirement did not, however, mean a downturn in his productivity. From 2004 until 2021 he worked uninterruptedly and with double energy on his magnum opus, the two-volume Oxford Latin Syntax ('the OLS'), which he had started working on some years earlier. In this monumental Syntax, which was intended to be the modern successor to the 19th-century grammar of R. Kühner and C. Stegmann1 (a work that Pinkster highly admired), the research fruits of his long and productive career were brought together in a methodologically new and encompassing grammatical framework. The second volume of the Oxford Latin Syntax came out in 2021, just a few months before his death.

In a way, this special issue on 'discourse markers' is a sequel to the special issue on 'particles' edited by Anna Wierzbicka, Journal of Pragmatics 10(5), which appeared more than a decade ago (1986). The groups of phenomena to which these two terms refer have much in common. Both belong to a wider category of 'pragmatic function words', which share as a basic characteristic that they do not convey propositional meaning but fulfill other, more procedural functions, and there is also a certain overlap between the phenomena involved. In spite of this overlap, however, the recent popularity of the term discourse marker involves more than a mere change of terminology. It also represents a difference in approach. Research on particles, of which Germany formed an important centre in the seventies and eighties (cf. e.g. Weydt, 1969, and the series of volumes edited by Weydt, 1977, 1979, 1983, 1989) tends to be predominantly semantic in nature. 1 It concentrates predominantly on scalar particles and on modal particles (Abt~Snungspartikeln), the functions of which are analyzed in terms of the attitudes and expectations of the speaker with respect to the propositional content and/or illocutionary force of single utterances. Research on discourse markers, on the other hand, which started more than a decade later on the basis of English and French discourse (see e.g. Schiffrin, 1987; Roulet et al., 1985; but cf. also the pioneering studies by Van Dijk, 1977, 1979), is predominantly oriented on discourse analysis. A methodological corrolary of this orientation is the prevalent use of corpus based data. A characteristic which most approaches to discourse markers have in common, and which forms also one of the recurrent themes in the contributions to this special issue, is the key role that is attributed to coherence relations. The basic assumption is that discourse (a term which covers both spoken and written text) does not consist * Corresponding author. Fax: +31 13 466 31 10. This is, of course, not to say that (discourse) pragmatic aspects are disregarded, or that there are no particle studies that are predominantly or even radically pragmatic (cf. e.g. Franck, 1980). In her introduction to the special issue on particles, Wierzbicka (1986) presents a useful characterization of a number of different approaches to particles.

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Propertius 1.20 poses many interpretative questions, which scholars have tried to solve not least by comparing the poem with other versions of the Hylas myth, notably those of Apollonius (Argon. 1.1153ff.) and Theocritus (Id. 13). The relationship of Propertius’ poem to Valerius Flaccus’ Hylas episode (Argon. 3.481ff.), however, has received little attention, although Valerius offers the most elaborate version of the myth.

Recently, Philip Hardie has initiated the approach of ‘retrospective interpretation’ for Valerius Flaccus’ reading of Virgil’s Aeneid. He has shown that Valerius—and other Flavian epic poets—read and interpret their most important model, Virgil’s Aeneid, in a way that anticipates modern studies of intertextuality; it is therefore attractive to use Valerius’ readings and interpretations of Virgil as a critical tool for our own reading of the Aeneid.

But what about Valerius’ other models? I would like to show through a few examples that in his Hylas episode Valerius has carefully read and interpreted Propertius 1.20 in a way that bears close resemblance to modern readings of Latin poetry. In addition I hope to show that Valerius also provides us with an interesting new interpretation of Propertius 1.20.

The influence of the ancient literary tradition upon the Georgics is as broad as it is profound , but in Virgil’s highly allusive didactic poem, the description of the Noric cattle plague at the end of Georgics 3 holds a unique position. As R.F. Thomas comments, “nowhere else does Virgil draw so deeply from a single source” . This source is Lucretius’ account of the human plague of Athens in the sixth book of his De Rerum Natura, which in its turn draws heavily on Thucydides’ account of the same event (2.48ff.). As with Virgil’s plague, Lucretius’ episode rounds off a book – in fact the entire work – and the pessimistic ending of both Virgil’s third book and Lucretius’ didactic epic have received a lot of scholarly attention . Another text that is part of this series of literary plagues, however, Ovid’s account of the mythological plague that ravaged the animals and humans of Aegina in book 7 of the Metamorphoses, has been rather neglected. As I will argue, this Ovidian episode can be seen as the climax of the series of poetical plague descriptions. Ovid has cleverly reworked Virgil’s account in combination with its aftermath in the Georgics, as well as in the Aeneid, to fit the poetical agenda of his work.

The poetry of the famous Roman poet Catullus (first century BC) has come down to us through a single manuscript. The question as to whether the order of the poems in this collection shows original composition of the poet has vexed scholars for over a hundred years. This paper will show that modern conceptions of publishing have anachronistically influenced the proposed solutions to this problem. After examination of the reactions of ancient readers to Catullus’ poetry, it will become clear that no ancient reader of Catullus’ poems has read the same “book”. This urges us to reconsider our frame of reference in discussing ancient publishing.

Apollonius of Rhodes’ digression on Heracles and Theiodamas (Arg. 1.1211-20) alludes to Callimachus’ version of the story in his Aetia (fr. 24-5 Pf.). This article provides a metapoetical interpretation of the intertextual contact. The ways in which both poets deal with Heracles reveal the similar but different reactions of these “Callimachean” poets to the heroic-epic literary tradition.

"Theocritus’ Idyll 17 is the best example of a Hellenistic poem praising Ptolemy II Philadelphus, under whose rule Alexandria became the cultural capital of the world. The encomium can be seen as an important document for the literary representation of this ruler of both a Greek and an Egyptian population. In this paper I will show that Idyll 17 systematically engages in an "interpretatio Graeca" of Egyptian ideology.

Sufficient archeological material is available to suggest that the Ptolemies were very interested in their Egyptian royal status, and recent findings from the harbour of Alexandria have emphasized this Ptolemaic interest. Although the reflection of Ptolemaic ideology in Alexandrian poetry has been the topic of several studies in the last decades (e.g. Merkelbach 1981, Bing 1988, Koenen 1993, Selden 1998), Idyll 17 has been rather neglected. Quite recently, Stephens 2003 and Hunter 2003 have discerned some pharaonic ideological elements in the poem, but a systematic treatment of pharaonic motifs in the poem, which could strengthen their case, is missing. Thus, Hunter, in his commentary on Idyll 17, mainly offers parallels from Egyptian pharaonic hymns for the last part of the poem, and claims that “the Egyptian color is painted with the broadest brush” (p. 53).

I will argue, by contrast, that the Greek ideas about kingship in this poem, expressed through allusions to both Homer and Hesiod, are Egyptian at the same time. For that purpose I will study two central themes of the poem: Philadelphus’ association with both Zeus and the bronze race of heroes. 

Philadelphus is consistently connected with Zeus in Idyll 17. The ancient and familiar Greek idea, expressed, for instance, by Herodotus in his treatment of Egypt (2.42), that Zeus is the equivalent of the Egyptian god of the sun (Ammon-)Re, seems the basis for this association. The pharaoh was considered “(Ammon-)Re on earth” and was simultaneously regarded as “son of (Ammon-)Re”, as each pharaoh was the (ideological) son of the previous pharaoh. I will show that in Idyll 17, both these conceptions of the pharaoh are applied, although in traditional Hesiodic language, not only to Philadelphus, but also to his pharaonic dynasty. The poem suggests that this included his father and predecessor Ptolemy Soter, the previous pharaoh Alexander the Great and their mutual ancestor Hercules, who was also pharaoh of Egypt, according to Manetho.

Furthermore, Philadelphus is associated with heroes of the divine bronze race, called "hemitheoi" by Hesiod. Most explicitly, he is compared to the Homeric heroes Diomedes and Achilles. I will argue that the comparison of Philadelphus with this race is meant to explain his pharaonic status, as both god and man, in Greek terms.

I will show that these are two essential ways in which Idyll 17 merges both paradigms, the Greek and the Egyptian, so that this thoroughly Greek poem is also thoroughly Egyptian.

References:

Bing, P. (1988), The Well-Read Muse: Present and Past in Callimachus and the Hellenistic Poets, Göttingen.

Hunter, R.L. (2003), Theocritus: Encomium of Prolemy Philadelphus, Berkeley.

Koenen, L. (1993), ‘The Ptolemaic king as a religious figure’ in A.W. Bulloch, E.S. Gruen, A.A. Long, and A.F. Stewart (eds.), Images and Ideologies: Self-Definition in the Hellenistic World, Berkeley, 25-115.

Merkelbach, R. (1981), ‘Das Königtum der Ptolemäer und die hellenistischen Dichter’ in N. Hinske (ed.), Alexandrien, Mainz, 27-35.

Selden, D. (1998), ‘Alibis’, CA 17.2: 299-412.

Stephens, S. (2003), Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria, Berkeley. ""

Whereas Silius’ indebtedness to Virgil’s Aeneid has received a lot of scholarly attention, the relationship between the Punica and the epic of his contemporary Valerius Flaccus has not. This is due to the fact that intertextual contact seems to be practically non-existent or is at least very hard to pin down.
In this paper I will argue for an intertextual link between the manifestations of the archetypal poet Orpheus in both Flavian epics, which might explain why the intertextual between the two poems is so hard to detect. As I will suggest, the appearance of Orpheus in the Punica, in the context of the Argonautic expedition (11.469-72), functions as a sly metapoetical allusion to the Flavian Argonautica, revealing the different programmatic positions taken by both Flavian poets with regard to the epic tradition.

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Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible.

Apollonius of Rhodes' digression on Heracles and Theiodamas (Arg. 1, 1211-1220) alludes to Callimachus' version of the story in his Aetia (frr. 24-25 Pf.). This article provides a metapoetical interpretation of the intertextual contact. The ways in which both poets deal with Heracles reveal the similar but different reactions of these "Callimachean" poets to the heroic-epic literary tradition.