The Timaeus and Creation in Cicero's De Natura Deorum
By Michael A.D. Moore
Cicero in discussing Platonic physics in De Natura Deorum, focuses on the idea of creation. In contrast to Plato, who I argue, reasons from a creator to creation, Cicero chooses to argue from creation to creator, and this informs his method in moving from the sensible world to the intelligible world by appeal to analogies of the sensible world.
Another Homerisches Wort: τιθαιβώσσω ‘store up’ (Od. 13.106)
By Alexander Nikolaev
The meaning and etymology of Greek τιθαιβώσσω are unknown. The purpose of this paper is to review the attestations and propose a novel linguistic analysis, starting not with alleged Indo-European cognates, but rather with familiar grammatical rules of Greek. It is argued that the meaning is ‘to stick in, to deposit’ and the cognate is Latin fīgere ‘insert, fix’.
Cicero demonstrates a transmission error at De divinatione 1.14-15
By David Perry
Cicero’s De divinatione 1.14-15 is evidence, albeit fictional, for ancient errors of transposition. Quintus Cicero recites from memory his brother’s translation of Aratus’ Phaenomena 913-55; Quintus misplaces some lines from their Greek-manuscript order, which Cicero had likely kept. Cicero’s characterization of Quintus and emphasis on Quintus’ memory may make this a wry comment on faulty memories of poetry.
Latinization, multilingualism and language shift in the Western provinces
By Simona Stoyanova
LatinNow uses sociolinguistics, epigraphy and archaeology to write a social history of the north-western Roman provinces with a particular focus on the spread of Latin, bi- and multi-lingualism, the fate of local languages, levels of literacy and the complex nexus between language-identity-culture. We are exploiting digital resources to explore the factors that correlate with these linguistic and cultural changes.
An Unexpected Meaning of Epistasthai in Plato?
By Emily Hulme Kozey
Scholars have observed that epistasthai is used multiple times in Herodotus to mean “to suppose,” where the subject’s conviction is shown immediately to be misguided (e.g., Powell 1938). Ancient philosophy specialists (Vlastos 1957; Burnyeat 2011) have resisted seeing this as a possible meaning in philosophical writers including Plato, but I propose Phaedo 96c as a candidate passage with this sense.