A variety of items today:

Adrian Murdoch is 'thinking out loud' about Julian, Marcus Aurelius, and Ammianus ...

Alun comments on how America really isn't the new Rome ... (presumably referring to the United States) ...

Ed Flinn has a Gallienus/Athena ...

N.S. Gill has some notes on Book III of the Iliad ... she also commemorates Trajan's birthday (yesterday) ...

Ioannis Georganas provides us with a report from the Greek press on the discovery of the harbour of Knossos ...

Laura Gibbs has her usual triposterate of Latin game (a crossword), proverb, and Bible passage (from Daniel) ....

Michael Gilleland has a poem by Palladas ...

I note there's a new blog out there ... audio video disco seems to be a team blog from a Latin teacher (jm) and robin (whose profile comes up as an error) ... interesting stuff there which seems to parallel what's going on in jm's classroom ...

Project Gutenberg has put up Foster's translation of Cassius Dio ... as Adrian Murdoch notes, it's probably better to stick with the Cary translation at Lacus Curtius, if you need it online ....


Three more papers up at the Princeton/Stanford Working Papers page:

From “Socratic logoi” to “dialogues”: Dialogue in Fourth-century Genre Theory
Andrew Ford, Princeton University

This paper argues that we can only have a just appreciation of the rise and early development of philosophic dialogue in Greece by bracketing the immense influence that the Platonic version of the form has exerted and turning instead to tracing how “Socratic logoi” came to be recognized as a new prose genre in fourth-century Athens. A consideration of the early terms used to name the form suggests that dialogue should not be derived from fifth-century mime or drama but should be understood in the context of the burgeoning rhetorical literature of the period; in particular, dialogue will be shown to be one of many innovative kinds of fictional speech-texts that were proclaiming new and special powers for written prose.

THE GENRE OF GENRES: Paeans and Paian in Early Greek Poetry
Andrew Ford, Princeton University

Abstract: This essay considers recent monographs on the paean as a significant, if problematic example of the return of genre as a critical category in Greek lyric. I then consider why the peaen remains resistant to neat classification and finally suggest, through reading a series of early paeanic texts, that we can better understand the elusive form if we put aside the quest for a timeless, ideal pattern and notice instead certain religious and rhetorical dynamics that the paian-cry itself entails.

Herodotus and the Poets
Andrew Ford, Princeton University

Abstract: This is an attempt to describe Herodotus’ relation to Greek poets, both as historical sources and as “cultural capital.” It is a brief discussion (1500 words) written for a general audience; but it may be of interest as raising a matter not often considered outside of the excellent and long study by Ph.-E. Legrand in Vol. 1 of the Budé Hérodote (pp. 147 ff.).