BMCR 2015.05.42 Dyck on Gelzer, Cicero: ein biographischer Versuch. 2.

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From BMCR:

Matthias Gelzer, Cicero: ein biographischer Versuch. 2., erweiterte Auflage mit einer forschungsgeschichtlichen Einleitung und einer Ergänzungsbibliographie von Werner Riess (first published 1969). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2014. Pp. xxvii, 407. ISBN 9783515099035. €39.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Andrew R. Dyck, Los Angeles (jmf_dyck​ AT ​
hotmail.com)

[The Table of Contents is listed below.]

The Foreword explains that this is the third of Gelzer’s biographies to be issued in a new edition, the biographies of Pompey (2005, ed. E. Herrmann-Otto) and Caesar (2008, ed. E. Baltrusch) having preceded. The Intoduction places Gelzer within the history of scholarship, beginning with a biographical sketch from his birth as son of a Protestant pastor in Liestal, Switzerland, his studies in Basel and Leipzig, where he produced a dissertation on Byzantine administration in Egypt (1907), and Habilitation in Freiburg with the pioneering study of the Roman nobility.1 (#n1) There followed his call to Greifswald and acceptance of German citizenship in 1915, his brief tenure of a professorship in Strasbourg prior to the end of the Great War, and his call to Frankfurt/M. (1919), where he taught until retirement in 1955 and died in 1974.

Biography is a genre of which readers (and therefore publishers) are fond, whereas historians are usually not keen on writing about the lives of individuals. Gelzer’s shift to biography thus calls for explanation. Riess emphasizes that he made the move under the influence of the Pauly-Wissowa Realenzyklopädie, for which he wrote a series of important articles (p.XI). Christ, on the other hand, connects it with the political and intellectual caesura in Germany in the aftermath of the Great War.2 (#n2) The change of genre conceals, however, a continuing interest in the social dimension. Thus Gelzer insists that such figures as Lucullus and Brutus need to be seen against the background of the noble families from which they sprang.​ […]​

καὶ τὰ λοιπά:

BMCR 2015.05.42 (http://www.bmcreview.org/2015/05/20150542.html) on the BMCR blog

BMCR 2015.05.44 Ruppel on Morwood, Anderson, A Little Greek Reader

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James Morwood, Stephen Anderson, A Little Greek Reader. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xvii, 293. ISBN 9780199311729. $19.95 (pb).


Reviewed by Antonia Ruppel, Cornell University (antonia.ruppel)

Preview (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-little-greek-reader-9780199311729)

[A Little Greek Reader is based on Mary C. English and Georgia L. Irby's A Little Latin Reader. (BMCR review at 2012.09.11 (http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/2012-09-11.html) .]

We learn ancient languages so that we may read texts written in them; and for the most part, these texts will be literary: polished, crafted, complex, meant to impress and please their readers, often having survived only because of just those qualities. The obvious result of this is the lack of ancient language materials suitable for beginners, and while textbook authors have for a long time been writing their own practice sentences, the appeal of Caecilius est in horto and its word order will only take us so far.

This pedagogical desideratum has led to introductory textbooks such as Athenaze or JACT’s Reading Greek and Reading Latin, which, rather than relying on example sentences, impart new grammar and vocabulary through continuous stories written by the authors, or Learn to Read Latin and later, Learn to Read Greek, which offers the usual kinds of practice sentence written by the authors themselves, but then adds a large choice of well-annotated original text passages more or less from Chapter 1. The textbooks we have available thus fit a variety of teaching styles, be they motivated by the desire to get through the grammatical material as quickly as possible (at the risk of a rather dry first few weeks or months of instruction), or by the desire to keep the reason why we are learning classical languages right in front of student eyes the entire time (even though that may initially slow things down and result in large and heavy teaching materials: Learn to Read Greek, for example​, ​
comes in four big volumes).

​More:

BMCR 2015.05.44 (http://www.bmcreview.org/2015/05/20150544.html) on the BMCR blog
​

BMCR 2015.06.02 Han on Emilsson, Strange, Plotinus, Ennead VI.4 and VI.5

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Eyjólfur K. Emilsson, Steven K. Strange, Plotinus, Ennead VI.4 and VI.5: On the Presence of Being, One and the Same, Everywhere as a Whole. The Enneads of Plotinus with philosophical commentaries. Las Vegas; Zurich; Athens: Parmenides Publishing, 2015. Pp. 295. ISBN 9781930972346. $37.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Sui Han, Beijing (suihanhoudiao)

This new English translation of, and commentary on, Plotinus, Ennead VI.4-5, the joint achievement of the Plotinian scholars Eyjólfur K. Emilsson and Steven K. Strange, combines philological rigor with philosophical insight. An introduction and a synopsis help the readers on their way. As the title, On the Presence of Being, One and the Same, Everywhere as a Whole, indicates, Plotinus here explores the question of how intelligible being remains the same and whole, and the participation of the dispersed bodies in it does not render it divided. His ingenious solution to this problem, raised in Parmenides 131b-c, is that the participation of the sensible in the intelligible does not amount to the spatio- temporal presence of the intelligible in the sensible realm. In fact, the intelligible realm, where all individuals together form one unity, is always present to itself as a whole at its own level; the sensible, when it approaches this eternal presence, gives the impression of fragmentation only because it cannot receive all of the intelligible. Despite the clear formulation of this main thesis, some side issues in these two treatises are less lucid and cause more difficulties to their interpreters. In their introduction and commentary, Emilsson and Strange outline these controversial problems too, such as the doctrine of sense-perception in VI.4.6 (pp. 30, 151), the question of who we are in VI.4.14 and 16 (pp. 30, 195-200, 208) and the topic of the soul-trace in VI.4.15 (pp. 150-1).

​More: BMCR 2015.06.02 (http://www.bmcreview.org/2015/06/20150602.html) on the BMCR blog​