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Trochaic Septenarius
In ancient Greek and Latin literature, the trochaic septenarius (also known as the trochaic tetrameter catalectic) is a form of ancient poetic metre first used in 7th century BC Greek literature. It was one of the two most common metres of Roman comedy of the early 1st century BC and was also used for the marching songs sung by soldiers at Caesar's victory parade. After a period when it was little used, it is found again in the (variously dated to between 2nd and 5th century AD), and taken up again as a metre for Christian hymns. The same metre, with stress-rhythm replacing quantitative metre, has continued to be used, especially for hymns and anthems, right up to the present day. The Ancient Greeks called poems in this metre simply "tetrameters", while the name "trochaic septenarius" (or plural "trochaic septenarii") is used for Latin poems in the metre. The basic metre consists of 15 syllables alternating strong and weak. The Greek version of the metre is as follows (where � ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tragic Comic Masks - Roman Mosaic
A tragedy is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a tragic hero, main character or cast of characters. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy is to invoke an accompanying catharsis, or a "pain [that] awakens pleasure,” for the audience. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term ''tragedy'' often refers to a specific Poetic tradition, tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western culture, Western civilization. That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Classical Athens, Greeks and the Elizabethan era, Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenistic civilization, Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it. Originating in the theatre of ancient Greece ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alberic Of Monte Cassino
Alberic of Monte Cassino was a Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, who died in 1088. He was a cardinal from 1057. He was (perhaps) a native of Trier, and became a Benedictine. He successfully opposed the teachings of Berengarius, which were considered heretical by the Pope, defending the measures of Gregory VII during the Investiture Controversy. He is the author of numerous works in theology, hagiography, grammar, rhetoric and music; and is the author of the earliest medieval treatise on ''ars dictaminis'', or letter-writing (''De dictamine''). Many of his letters are found in the works of Peter Damian. One of his pupils, John of Gaeta, was the future Pope Gelasius II Pope Gelasius II (c. 1060/1064 – 29 January 1119), born Giovanni Caetani or Giovanni da Gaeta (also called ''Coniulo''), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 24 January 1118 to his death in 1119. A monk of Monte C ....I. S. Robinson, ''The Papacy 1073-1198'' (1990), p. 214. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus ( ; 254 – 184 BC) was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by Livius Andronicus, the innovator of Latin literature. The word Plautine () refers to both Plautus's own works and works similar to or influenced by his. Biography Not much is known about Titus Maccius Plautus's early life. It is believed that he was born in Sarsina, a small town in Emilia Romagna in northern Italy, around 254 BC.''The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature'' (1996) Ed. M.C. Howatson and Ian Chilvers, Oxford University Press, Oxford Reference Online According to Morris Marples, Plautus worked as a stage-carpenter or scene-shifter in his early years. It is from this work, perhaps, that his love of the theater originated. His acting talent was eventually discovered; and he adopted the nomen "Maccius" (from Maccus, a clownis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brevis Brevians
''Brevis brevians'', also known as iambic shortening or , is a metrical feature of early Latin verse, especially Plautus and Terence, in which a pair of syllables which are theoretically short + long (u –) can be scanned as a pair of short syllables (u u). The plural is . One common type is where a two-syllable word ends in a vowel which was originally long, for example and so on. This type is also frequently found in classical Latin. For example: : :"I want to know whether you will or won't allow us to cook dinner here?" Another type, not found in classical Latin poetry, is where a closed syllable such as ''il-'' or ''ec-'' scans as a short syllable. This sometimes happens after a monosyllabic word, for example: : :"What did they just say to each other? Tell me!" It may also happen in the 2nd syllable of a 4-syllable word, for example: : :"He's preparing a more bitter winter for his old age" It is thought by many scholars that such shortenings reflect the actual pronuncia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alliteration (Latin)
The term alliteration was invented by the Italian humanist Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503), in his dialogue ''Actius'', to describe the practice common in Virgil, Lucretius, and other Roman writers of beginning words or syllables with the same consonant or vowel. He gives examples such as "the rocks were resounding with the salt-water" or "he recognised his friend Anchises" or "defended by a great force of men". Pontano also used the term alliteration to refer to repetition of letters in medial positions. Among other kinds, he mentions the frequent case when the last syllable of a word begins with the same consonant as the first syllable of the next word, as in "the rigid breastplate made of bronze" (Virgil). Since "x" is pronounced s the phrase "the rocks were resounding with sea water" (Virgil) can also be considered an example of this kind. Alliteration was a prominent feature of Latin literature (in contrast to Greek), especially in poetry in the 3rd to 1st centuries BC ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ennius
Quintus Ennius (; ) was a writer and poet who lived during the Roman Republic. He is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was born in the small town of Rudiae, located near modern Lecce (ancient ''Calabria'', today Salento), a town founded by the Messapians, and could speak Greek as well as Latin and Oscan (his native language). Although only fragments of his works survive, his influence in Latin literature was significant, particularly in his use of Greek literary models. Biography Very little is reliably known about the life of Ennius. His contemporaries hardly mentioned him and much that is related about him could have been embroidered from references to himself in his now fragmentary writings. Some lines of the ''Annales'', as well as ancient testimonies, for example, suggest that Ennius opened his epic with a recollection of a dream in which the ancient epic-writer Homer informed him that his spirit had been reborn into Ennius. It is true that the doctrine o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gnaeus Naevius
Gnaeus Naevius (; c. 270 – c. 201 BC) was a Roman epic poet and dramatist of the Old Latin period. He had a notable literary career at Rome until his satiric comments delivered in comedy angered the Metellus family, one of whom was consul. After a sojourn in prison he recanted and was set free by the tribunes (who had the tribunician power, in essence the power of habeas corpus). After a second offense he was exiled to Tunisia, where he wrote his own epitaph and committed suicide. His comedies were in the genre of Palliata Comoedia, an adaptation of Greek New Comedy. A soldier in the Punic Wars, he was highly patriotic, inventing a new genre called '' Praetextae Fabulae'', an extension of tragedy to Roman national figures or incidents, named after the '' Toga praetexta'' worn by high officials. Of his writings there survive only fragments of several poems preserved in the citations of late ancient grammarians ( Charisius, Aelius Donatus, Sextus Pompeius Festus, Aulus Gell ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Livius Andronicus
Lucius Livius Andronicus (; ; ) was a Greco-Roman dramatist and epic poet of the Old Latin period during the Roman Republic. He began as an educator in the service of a noble family, producing Latin translations of Greek works, including Homer's ''Odyssey''. The translations were meant, at first, as educational devices for the school which he founded. He also wrote works for the stage—both tragedies and comedies—which are regarded as the first dramatic works written in the Latin language. His comedies were based on Greek New Comedy and featured characters in Greek costume. Thus, the Romans referred to this new genre by the term comoedia palliata or fabula palliata, meaning "cloaked comedy," the pallium being a Greek-style cloak. The Roman biographer Suetonius later coined the term "half-Greek" of Livius and Ennius (referring to their genre, not their ethnic backgrounds). The genre was imitated by later generations of playwrights, and Andronicus is accordingly regarded ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Birds (play)
''The Birds'' () is a comedy by the Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes. It was performed in 414 BC at the City Dionysia in Athens where it won second place. It has been acclaimed by modern critics as a perfectly realized fantasy remarkable for its mimicry of birds and for the gaiety of its songs. Unlike the author's other early plays, it includes no direct mention of the Peloponnesian War and there are few references to Athenian politics, and yet it was staged not long after the commencement of the Sicilian Expedition, an ambitious military campaign that greatly increased Athenian commitment to the war effort. In spite of that, the play has many indirect references to Athenian political and social life. It is the longest of Aristophanes's surviving plays and yet it is a fairly conventional example of Old Comedy. The plot of the play revolves around Pisthetaerus, an Athenian who convinces the birds to create a great city in the sky, and thus regain their status as the original ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Knights
''The Knights'' ( ''Hippeîs''; Attic: ) was the fourth play written by Aristophanes, who is considered the master of Old Comedy. The play is a satire on the social and political life of classical Athens during the Peloponnesian War, and in this respect it is typical of all the dramatist's early plays. It is unique, however, in the relatively small number of its characters, and this was due to its vitriolic preoccupation with one man, the pro-war populist Cleon. Cleon had prosecuted Aristophanes for slandering the polis with an earlier play, ''The Babylonians'' (426 BC), for which the young dramatist had promised revenge in '' The Acharnians'' (425 BC), and it was in ''The Knights'' (424 BC) that his revenge was exacted. ''The Knights'' won first prize at the Lenaia festival when it was produced in 424 BC. Plot ''The Knights'' is a satire on political and social life in 5th-century BC Athens. The characters are drawn from real life, and Cleon is clearly intended to be the villa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aristophanes
Aristophanes (; ; ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek Ancient Greek comedy, comic playwright from Classical Athens, Athens. He wrote in total forty plays, of which eleven survive virtually complete today. The majority of his surviving plays belong to the genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy and are considered its most valuable examples. Aristophanes' plays were performed at the religious festivals of Athens, mostly the City Dionysia and the Lenaia, and several of them won the first prize in their respective competitions. Also known as "The Father of Comedy" and "the Prince of Ancient Comedy", Aristophanes wrote plays that often dealt with real-life figures, including Euripides and Alcibiades, and contemporary events, such as the Peloponnesian War. He has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author. His plays are characterized by preposterous premises, explicit language, wordplays, and political satire. His powers of ridicule ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Persians
''The Persians'' (, ''Persai'', Latinised as ''Persae'') is an ancient Greek tragedy written during the Classical period of Ancient Greece by the Greek tragedian Aeschylus. It is the second and only surviving part of a now otherwise lost trilogy that won the first prize at the dramatic competitions in Athens' City Dionysia festival in 472 BC, with Pericles serving as '' choregos''. Place in Aeschylus' work The first play in the trilogy, called ''Phineus'', presumably dealt with Jason and the Argonauts' rescue of King Phineus from the torture that the monstrous harpies inflicted at the behest of Zeus. The subject of the third play, ''Glaucus'', was either a mythical Corinthian king who was devoured by his horses because he angered the goddess Aphrodite (see Glaucus (son of Sisyphus)) or else a Boeotian farmer who ate a magical herb that transformed him into a sea deity with the gift of prophecy (see Glaucus). In ''The Persians'', Xerxes invites the gods' enmity for his hu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
