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Ad Usum Delphini
The ''Delphin Classics'' or ''Ad usum Delphini'' was a series of annotated editions of the Latin classics, intended to be comprehensive, which was originally created in the 17th century. The first volumes were created in the 1670s for Louis, ''le Grand Dauphin'', heir of Louis XIV (“Delphini” is the Latinization (genitive) of '' Dauphin''), and were written entirely in Latin. Thirty-nine scholars contributed to the series, which was edited by Pierre Huet with assistance from several co-editors, including Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet and Anne Dacier. The main features included the main Latin texts; a paraphrase in the margins or below in simpler Latin prose (an ''ordo verborum''); extended notes on specific words and lines, mainly about history, myth, geography, or natural sciences; and indices. One useful pedagogical feature of this series is that it keeps students reading and working in the target language (Latin). The original volumes each had an engraving of Arion and a dolph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition. Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), five declensions, four verb conjuga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Panegyrici Latini
' or ''Twelve Latin Panegyrics'' is the conventional title of a collection of twelve ancient Roman and late antique prose panegyric orations written in Latin. The authors of most of the speeches in the collection are anonymous, but appear to have been Gallic in origin. Aside from the first panegyric, composed by Pliny the Younger in AD 100, the other speeches in the collection date to between AD 289 and 389 and were probably composed in Gaul.Nixon and Rodgers, 4. The original manuscript, discovered in 1433, has perished; only copies remain.Nixon and Rodgers, 3–4. Background Gaul had a long history as a center of rhetoric. It maintained its dominance of the field well into the 4th century. An early lead in the field was taken by the Aedui, early allies of Rome and eager to assimilate to the ways of their new rulers: Maenian schools were celebrated as early as the reign of Tiberius ( AD 14–37). They continued to flourish into the days of Eumenius' grandf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anne Dacier
Anne Le Fèvre Dacier (1647 – 17 August 1720), better known during her lifetime as Madame Dacier, was a French scholar, translator, commentator and editor of the classics, including the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey''. She sought to champion ancient literature and used her great capabilities in Latin and Greek for this purpose as well as for her own financial support, producing a series of editions and translations from which she earned her living. She was the dedicatee of Gilles Ménage's ''Historia mulierum philosopharum,'' whose characterisation of her and of Anna Maria van Schurman was used to provide leading examples in treatises arguing for female education across the following centuries. Early life and education The exact date of her birth is not known and sources differ in their opinions: 1647 is proposed by Frade and Wyles and also Conley in the '' Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''; the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' suggests 1654; and the ''Catholic Encyclopedia' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dares Phrygius
Dares Phrygius ( grc, Δάρης), according to Homer, was a Trojan priest of Hephaestus. He was supposed to have been the author of an account of the destruction of Troy, and to have lived before Homer. A work in Latin, purporting to be a translation of this, and entitled ''Daretis Phrygii de excidio Troiae historia'', was much read in the Middle Ages, and was then ascribed to Cornelius Nepos, who is made to dedicate it to Sallust; but the language better fits a period much later than the time of Nepos (probably the 5th century AD). It is doubtful whether the existing work is an abridgment of a larger Latin work or an adaptation of a Greek original. Together with the similar work of Dictys Cretensis (with which it is generally printed), the ''De excidio'' forms the chief source for the numerous medieval accounts of the Trojan legend, the so-called Matter of Troy. Dares has claimed 866,000 Greeks and 676,000 Trojans were killed in this war, but archaeology has uncovered nothing th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dictys Cretensis
Dictys Cretensis, i.e. Dictys of Crete (, ; grc, Δίκτυς ὁ Κρής) of Knossos was a legendary companion of Idomeneus during the Trojan War, and the purported author of a diary of its events, that deployed some of the same materials worked up by Homer for the ''Iliad''. The story of his journal, an amusing fiction addressed to a knowledgeable Alexandrian audience, came to be taken literally during Late Antiquity. Literary history In the 4th century AD a certain Q. Septimius brought out ''Dictys Cretensis Ephemeris belli Trojani'' ("Dictys of Crete, chronicle of the Trojan War") in six books, a work that professed to be a Latin translation of the Greek version. Its chief interest lies in the fact that, as knowledge of Greek waned and disappeared in Western Europe, this and the ''De excidio Trojae'' of Dares Phrygius were the sources from which the Homeric legends were transmitted to the Romance literature of the Middle Ages. An elaborate frame story presented in the prolog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480 – 524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, ''magister officiorum'', historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the translation of the Greek classics into Latin, a precursor to the Scholastic movement, and, along with Cassiodorus, one of the two leading Christian scholars of the 6th century. The local cult of Boethius in the Diocese of Pavia was sanctioned by the Sacred Congregation of Rites in 1883, confirming the diocese's custom of honouring him on the 23 October. Boethius was born in Rome a few years after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. A member of the Anicii family, he was orphaned following the family's sudden decline and was raised by Quintus Aurelius Memmius Symmachus, a later consul. After mastering both Latin and Greek in his youth, Boethius rose to prominence as a statesman during the Ostrogothic Kingdom: becoming a senator by a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Valerius Maximus
Valerius Maximus () was a 1st-century Latin writer and author of a collection of historical anecdotes: ''Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium libri IX'' ("Nine books of memorable deeds and sayings", also known as ''De factis dictisque memorabilibus'' or ''Facta et dicta memorabilia''). He worked during the reign of Tiberius (14 AD to 37 AD). During the Middle Ages, Valerius Maximus was one of the most copied Latin prose authors, second only to Priscian. More than 600 medieval manuscripts of his books have survived as a result.Briscoe, ''Valerius Maximus'', p. 15. Biography Nothing is known of his life except that his family was poor and undistinguished, and that he owed everything to Sextus Pompeius (consul AD 14), proconsul of Asia, whom he accompanied to the East in 27. Pompeius was the center of a literary circle to which Ovid belonged; he was also an intimate friend of the most literary prince of the imperial family, Germanicus. Although he shared the same name as a prestigious ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Titus Livius
Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding in 753 BC through the reign of Augustus in Livy's own lifetime. He was on familiar terms with members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and a friend of Augustus, whose young grandnephew, the future emperor Claudius, he exhorted to take up the writing of history. Life Livy was born in Patavium in northern Italy, now modern Padua, probably in 59 BC. At the time of his birth, his home city of Patavium was the second wealthiest on the Italian peninsula, and the largest in the province of Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy). Cisalpine Gaul was merged in Italy proper during his lifetime and its inhabitants were given Roman citizenship by Julius Caesar. In his works, Livy often expressed his deep affection and pride for Patavium, and the city was well kno ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus (; c. 254 – 184 BC), commonly known as Plautus, 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 the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus. 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 names "Maccius" (a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julius Caesar Scaliger
Julius Caesar Scaliger (; April 23, 1484 – October 21, 1558), or Giulio Cesare della Scala, was an Italian scholar and physician, who spent a major part of his career in France. He employed the techniques and discoveries of Renaissance humanism to defend Aristotelianism against the New Learning. In spite of his contentious disposition, his contemporary reputation was high. Jacques Auguste de Thou claimed that none of the ancients could be placed above him and that he had no equal in his own time. Biography Scaliger's father, Benedetto Bordone, was a miniaturist and illuminator. Scaliger himself was known in his youth by the family name Bordone, but later insisted that he was a scion of the house of La Scala, for a hundred and fifty years lords of Verona. He was born in 1484 at the Rocca di Riva, on Lake Garda. There are two accounts of his life, his own and that of his critics. His own account When he was twelve, his kinsman the emperor Maximilian placed him among his pages. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manilius
The gens Manilia was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens are frequently confused with the Manlii, Mallii, and Mamilii. Several of the Manilii were distinguished in the service of the Republic, with Manius Manilius obtaining the consulship in 149 BC; but the family itself remained small and relatively unimportant.''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'', vol. II, p. 917 ("Manilia Gens"). Origin The nomen ''Manilius'' seems to be derived from the praenomen '' Manius'', and so probably shares a common root with the nomen of the Manlii. This being the case, the Manilii were almost certainly of Latin origin. Branches and cognomina The Manilii were never divided into distinct families, and the only surname found under the Republic is ''Mancinus'', although this probably belonged to one of the Manlii, who has been erroneously named as a Manilius in some manuscripts. A few cognomina are found in Imperial times. Members * Sextus Manilius, one ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quintus Curtius
Quintus Curtius Rufus () was a Roman historian, probably of the 1st century, author of his only known and only surviving work, ''Historiae Alexandri Magni'', "Histories of Alexander the Great", or more fully ''Historiarum Alexandri Magni Macedonis Libri Qui Supersunt'', "All the Books That Survive of the Histories of Alexander the Great of Macedon." Much of it is missing. Apart from his name on the manuscripts, nothing else certain is known of him. This fact alone has led philologists to believe that he had another historical identity, to which, due to the accidents of time, the link has been broken. A few theories exist. They are treated with varying degrees of credibility by various authors. Meanwhile, the identity of Quintus Curtius Rufus, historian, is maintained separately. The historical ''alter ego'' Curtius' work is uniquely isolated. No other ancient work refers to it, or as far as is known, to him. Peter Pratt pointing out that the Senate and emperors frequently proscri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
