The papers collected in this volume were presented at the 14th Trends in Classics international conference held in Thessaloniki in March 2021. The volume consists of an introductory chapter and two parts, a rather extensive Part I: Greek Language and Linguistics (pp. 47–521), and a much shorter Part II: Latin Language and Linguistics (pp. 523–645). At the end of the volume, there is a List of Contributors, a General Index, and an Index Locorum. The fact that there are nineteen papers on Greek and only six on Latin in this volume is, as the editors observe, the result of the response to the conference call and the invitation to the volume and not of a choice made by them (p. vii).
Thematically, there is quite a lot of variation in this volume: There are strictly linguistic papers, such as, for instance, the papers by Brian D. Joseph (on the augment from Early to Modern Greek), Marina Benedetti & Carla Bruno (on resultative secondary predications in Ancient Greek), Giuseppina di Bartolo (on the indication of irrealis and the use of ἄν in Post-Classical Greek) and Olga Spevak (on the ab urbe condita construction in Latin and the corresponding construction in Greek), and there are more philological ones, such as the contributions by Lara Pagani (on linguistic awareness in Hellenistic editorial practice on Homer), Wolfgang D. C. de Melo (on Varro’s etymological theory and practice), David Langslow (on the editing of a Late Latin medical translation) and Giovanbattista Galdi (on problems in the manuscript tradition of the Regula Benedicti), and there are papers focusing on social or literary aspects of language, such as the contributions by Luz Conti (on the use of ‘we’ in the sense of ‘I’ in Homer), Raquel Fornieles (on irony in Greek oratory), Rutger J. Allan (on Homeric enjambment) and Evangelos Karakasis (on Post-Classical diction in Calpurnius Siculus’ bucolic poetry). Furthermore, there are papers dealing with Early Greek and the development from Proto-Indo-European, such as the ones by Albio Cesare Cassio (on the variation between -οισι and -οις in Homer and the fate of instrumentals) and Georgios K. Giannakis (on the development from so-called tmesis to verbal prefixes and the possible connection with stress and intonation), and there are papers on later Greek, such as the papers by Mark Janse (on agreement and gender in New Testament Greek) and Marja Vierros (on the use of the inflectional endings -ες and -ας in Greek documentary papyri), and on later Latin, such as the paper by Piera Molinelli (on the language in the Latin translation of the Epistle to the Corinthians by Clement of Rome).
The fact that this volume is so heterogeneous makes it a bit difficult to discuss in a short review article ― and the reactions of the reviewer depend to a considerable extent on the background and research interests of that person. This reviewer has the general impression that the quality of the papers is quite high, but that it is even more difficult ― than is generally the case in conference acts and collections of articles ― to find a common denominator that unites all the various contributions.
The strict division between Greek and Latin represented in this volume is not always possible: one of the papers actually discusses both languages (Olga Spevak’s paper on the ab urbe condita construction which is compared to a similar construction in Greek) and one deals with Sabellian and Greek bilingualism (the paper by Paolo Poccetti on the numerical system in a settlement in southern Italy). The further division of the papers into sections within each language is not always crystal clear: for instance, the paper on the Greek augment (by Brian D. Joseph), found in the section called “Early Greek poetry and Linguistics”, could in my opinion just as well fit into the section “Comparative, Diachronic and Lexicographical Studies”. But such things are, of course, of minor importance.
The length of the papers varies a lot, from over forty pages (the paper by Klaas Bentein on discourse structure in Greek letters from the early Roman empire) to ten (Brian D. Joseph’s and David Langslow’s papers). A medium size paper in this volume consists of about twenty to twenty-five pages. This means that the editors have been more generous with space than is normally the case in conference volumes of this kind, which is generally good.
There is not enough space here to discuss all the contributions in this volume or even all the different themes dealt with in it, but I have a few remarks.
When reading several of the articles in this volume, one thought repeatedly comes to my mind and that is that it would be interesting to see the problem discussed ― and regarding one of the languages ― dealt with in both languages at the same time. This is, for instance, my impression when reading Lara Pagani’s fine paper on linguistic awareness in Hellenistic editorial practice on Homer, in which she convincingly shows that early Hellenistic philologists had some ideas about language change and referred to this when dealing with Homer’s text. The Roman philological practice seems to have started already about a century later than the Greek, in the 2nd c. BC, and notions about language change were familiar to Varro in the 1st c. BC (as mentioned, for instance, by Wolfgang D. C. de Melo in his paper on Varro’s etymologies). This Roman awareness of language change was probably inherited from the Greeks. It was imperfect and rudimentary, but both Greek and Roman philologists knew that it was important to their work.
In her very interesting paper on ἡμεῖς in the function of ἐγώ in the Iliad, Luz Conti analyzes a few passages in which she finds that this particular use of ἡμεῖς (here representing not only the personal pronoun but also the possessive one and the 1st plural forms of the verbs) reflects two opposite pragmatic meanings, i.e. either a strategy to reinforce the speaker’s authority and maintain distance to the addressee (a phenomenon often referred to as pluralis maiestatis) or a strategy to diminish the speaker’s authority and reduce the distance from the addressee (corresponding to the term pluralis modestiae). Even if it is, as she observes (p. 291), common that this feature is used for both these functions, it would in my view be wise to use the traditional expressions ― i.e. pluralis modestiae and pluralis reuerentiae ― with great caution: the use of the plural instead of the singular in the first and second persons changes over time and the use of the plural which Conti considers to be a kind of pluralis maiestatis in Homer differs very much from the phenomenon found in texts from Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period and which is referred to by this term. Since this use of the plural is found in both Latin and Greek texts, texts in both languages should, in my opinion, be taken into consideration when dealing with it.[1] I assume that this is done within the framework of the major project of which this article is a minor part.
The fine papers by David Langslow (on the editing of a medical text translated into Latin in the 6th century CE) and Giovanbattista Galdi (on the manuscript tradition of the Regula Benedicti from the 6th century) represent somewhat different attitudes towards a complex problem met with in the early medieval manuscripts to certain texts, namely the fact that some manuscripts have a rather “substandard” form of Latin whereas other manuscripts (often somewhat later) have a kind of Latin more in keeping with the normal grammatical and orthographical rules: the question is then whether to ascribe the deviations from the grammatical and orthographic norms to the author of the text (as Galdi seems inclined to do) or to the later scribes (as Langslow seems to consider as a possibility). This discussion has been going on for some time in Latin studies, and in my view, we have to consider both the possibility of Early Medieval “vulgarization” and that of Post-Carolingian “normalization” in these cases.[2] This problem seems to exist (as an old friend of mine, the Gothenburg Hellenist Bengt Alexandersson, told me many years ago) in the manuscripts of certain Greek texts too ― it would therefore be valuable if there in this respect were an exchange between the studies on both the classical languages.
The great thematical variation in this volume is to be expected given the theme of the conference and even if it makes it difficult to find a common denominator for all the papers in this volume, it is in my view also the merit of this book: such an encounter between scholars working on both the Classical languages from different points of view is very rare and therefore very important and it is just to be desired that there will be more conferences of this kind in the future.
Authors and Titles
Part I: Greek Language and Linguistics
1) Early Greek poetry and Linguistics
Daniel Kölligan: ‘Pindar’s genius or Homeric words? – The interplay of synchronic and diachronic analysis in Greek philology and linguistics’
Rutger J. Allen: ‘Homeric enjambment (and caesura): a functional-cognitive approach’
Albio Cesare Cassio: ‘Old Morphology in disguise: Homeric episynaloephe, Ζῆν(α), and the fate of IE instrumentals’
Lara Pagani: ‘“Not according to our usage”: linguistic awareness in Hellenistic editorial practice on Homer’
Eduard Meusel: ‘A song of milk and honey: the poetic transformation of an ancient ritual drink in Pindar’
Brian D. Joseph: ‘The Greek augment: what this amazingly enduring element says about continuity in Greek’
Georgios K. Giannakis: ‘At the crossroads of linguistics and philology: the tmesis-to-univerbation process in Ancient Greek’
2) Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics
Jésus de la Villa: ‘Ideological change and syntactic change in Ancient Greek: the case of ἄτη and τύχη’
Marina Benedetti & Carla Bruno: ‘Syntactic markedness and stylistic refinement: “proleptic” and “resultative” in Ancient Greek’
Mark Janse: ‘“Girl, you will be a woman soon”: grammatical versus semantic agreement of Greek hybrid nouns of the Mädchen type’
Luz Conti: ‘The expression of authority and solidarity: ἡμεῖς in place of ἐγώ in the Iliad’
Raquel Fornieles: ‘A first approach to irony in Greek oratory’
3) Comparative, Diachronic and Lexicographical Studies
Paolo Poccetti: ‘Greek numeral system and language contacts in an archaic native settlement of southern Italy’
Sara Kaczko: ‘Non-Attic vocalism, epiphoric forms, and Attic poetic traditions’
Julián Méndez Dosuna: Ἀμόργινος and ἀμοργίς: The color of olive oil lees and Aristophanes, Lysistrata 150 and 735, 737’
Panagiotis Filos: ‘Some remarks on ancient Epirote glosses’
4) Greek Papyri and Corpora
Klaas Bentein: ‘A typology of variations in the Ancient Greek epistolary frame (I–III AD)’
Marja Vierros: ‘Transposition of nominal and verbal bound morphemes: the case of -ες and -ας in Greek documentary papyri’
Giuseppina di Bartolo: ‘Some aspects of irrealis and the usage of ἄν in Post-Classical Greek’
Part II: Latin Language and Linguistics
1) Various issues in Latin Linguistics
Wolfgang D.C. de Melo: ‘Varro’s etymological theory and practice’
David Langslow: ‘An interplay of approaches in the editing of a Late Latin medical translation’
Olga Spevak: ‘Towards a unified account of the ab urbe condita construction in Latin and Ancient Greek’
Evangelos Karakasis: ‘Latin linguistics and Neronian pastoral revisited’
2) Linguistics, Philology and Christian Latin
Piera Molinelli: ‘New concepts in ancient languages: Greek and Latin (and beyond) in the first Christian letters’
Giovanbattista Galdi: ‘Searching for order in the Rule: the contribution of philology and linguistics to the study of Saint Benedict’s Latin’
Notes
[1] Cf., e.g., Harm Pinkster, Oxford Latin Syntax, vol. 1 (OUP), Oxford 2015, section 11.122, and the literature mentioned there. ― According to the dictionaries (for instance Liddell & Scott & Jones and Oxford Latin Dictionary) there is a corresponding use of “yours” instead of “thine” in poetry, which I discussed (and dismissed) in an article in an unfortunately somewhat obscure Festschrift (‘On the Use of ὑμέτερος and vester in Greek and Latin Poetry’, in: Hans Aili & Peter af Trampe (eds.), Tongues and Texts Unlimited: Studies in Honour of Tore Janson on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, Stockholm 2000, pp. 83–104; this is a sequel of ‘On the “Illogical” Vos in Late Latin Epistolography’, in: Louis Callebat (ed.), Latin vulgaire – Latin tardif IV: Actes du 4e colloque international sur le latin vulgaire et tardif. Caen, 2–5 septembre 1994, (Olms-Weidmann), Hildesheim & Zürich & New York 1995, pp. 337–353, where similar phenomena in contemporary Greek are mentioned too).
[2] Cf., e.g., Gerd V. M. Haverling, ‘On Variation in Syntax and Morphology in Late Latin texts’, in: Roger Wright (ed.), Latin vulgaire – Latin tardif VIII: Actes du VIIIe Colloque International sur le latin vulgaire et tardif, Oxford, 6–9 septembre 2006, (Olms–Weidmann), Hildesheim, Zürich & New York 2008, pp. 351–360; and ‘On textual criticism and linguistic development in the Late Latin translation of the Hippocratic Aphorisms’, in: David R. Langslow & Brigitte Maire (eds.), Body, Disease and Treatment in a changing World. Latin texts and contexts in ancient and medieval medicine (Proceedings of the IXth International Conference «Ancient Latin Medical Texts», Hulme Hall, Université of Manchester, 5th-8th September 2007), (Éditions BHMS), Lausanne 2010, pp. 105–118.