What happens when an exercise succeeds too well? Could a school exercise designed to teach
a foreign language also influence how a discipline interprets its central literary texts?
For centuries in Britain, Latin versification was the pinnacle of both pedagogy and scholarship,
the ultimate proof of a good teacher and a good pupil. Every day,…[Read more]

What happens when an exercise succeeds too well? Could a school exercise designed to teach
a foreign language also influence how a discipline interprets its central literary texts?
For centuries in Britain, Latin versification was the pinnacle of both pedagogy and scholarship,
the ultimate proof of a good teacher and a good pupil. Every day,…[Read more]

C. Lanham, ed., Latin Grammar and Rhetoric: Classical Theory and Modern Practice, Continuum Press 2002, pp. 139–179.

Thucydides’s unusual praise of the Athenian general Phrynichus in 8.27.5 gives insight into how the historian thought and wrote. The praise seems unwarranted in the immediate instance and in light of Phrynichus’s subsequent actions. I argue that the praise seems directed at the manner in which Phrynichus made his decisions, and how Thucydides’s…[Read more]

Thucydides’s unusual praise of the Athenian general Phrynichus in 8.27.5 gives insight into how the historian thought and wrote. The praise seems unwarranted in the immediate instance and in light of Phrynichus’s subsequent actions. I argue that the praise seems directed at the manner in which Phrynichus made his decisions, and how Thucydides’s…[Read more]