Volume 5 of PLLS was the last of the Liverpool series of seminar volumes. Between 1975 and 1985 the Liverpool Latin Seminar held 52 ordinary meetings and 4 colloquia, involving altogether 156 papers and participants from all over the world. Although many diverse approaches were represented in the Seminar, it was underpinned by two underlying convictions: first, that ancient literature functions at the highest intellectual level and deserves to be studied at that level; and second, that the ancient literatures can only be understood properly against the background of the societies in which they originated.

Classical Latin Poetry; Medieval Latin Poetry; Greek Poetry: Classical Latin Poetry; Medieval Latin Poetry; Greek Poetry (Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar)

Literature & Fiction

Cairns, Francis

History & Criticism

Francis Cairns (Publications) Ltd

The so-called "First Synod of St Patrick" is a short (less than 4 pages) collection of assorted rules for the behaviour of (probably) Irish clergy and laity, possibly originating from the sixth or seventh century. The single manuscript itself is probably from the ninth or even tenth century. This volume prints the results of a symposium held by a group of scholars in Belfast to discuss various aspects of the text and its background. With the text itself in Latin with English translation, a commentary on it, and photographs of the manuscript, the editor and contributors provide a useful glimpse of a difficult but fascinating era in early medieval history.

The Bishops's Synod: The First Synod of Patrick. A Symposium with Text, Translation and Commentary (Arca, 1)

Faris, M. J.

About the Author\nFrancis Cairns is Professor of Classical Languages at The Florida State University, having previously held the Chair of Latin in the University of Liverpool and the Chair of Latin Language and Literature in the University of Leeds. He is the author of numerous articles and of Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry (1972), Tibullus: A Hellenistic Poet at Rome (1979), Virgil's Augustan Epic (1989), Sextus Propertius: The Augustan Elegist (2006), Papers on Roman Elegy (1969-2003) (2007), Roman Lyric: Collected Papers on Catullus and Horace (2012) and Hellenistic Epigram: Contexts of Exploration (2016).

Vergil & Roman Elegy; Medieval Latin Poetry and Prose; Greek Lyric: Vergil & Roman Elegy; Medieval Latin Poetry and Prose; Greek Lyric (Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar)

Poetry

Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire, Volume 1: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus and Malchus (Arca, 6)

Blockley, R.C.

Medieval Latin Poetry and Prose (Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar)

Late Latin and Early Romance presents a theory of the relationship between Latin and Romance during the period 400-1250. The central hypothesis is that what we now call 'Medieval Latin' was invented around 800 AD when Carolingian scholars standardised the pronunciation of liturgical texts, and that otherwise what was spoken was simply the local variety of Old French, Old Spanish, etc. Thus, the view generally held before the publication of this work, that 'Latin' and 'Romance' existed alongside each other in earlier centuries, is anachronistic. Before 800, Late Latin was Early Romance. This hypothesis is examined first from the viewpoint of historical linguistics, with particular attention paid to the idea of lexical diffusion (ch. 1), and then (ch. 2) through detailed study of pre-Carolingian texts. Chapter 3 deals with the impact in France of the introduction of standardised Latin by Carolingian scholars, and shows how the earliest texts written in the vernacular resulted from it. The final two chapters turn to the situation in Spain from the eighth to the thirteenth centuries. Ch. 4 suggests, on the evidence of a large variety of texts, that before 1080 the new Latin pronunciation (i.e. Medieval Latin) was not used; Ch. 5 charts the slow spread, as a result of Europeanising reforms, of a distinction between Latin and vernacular Romance between 1080 and 1250. There is an extensive bibliography and full indexes. Wright's controversial book presents a wide range of detailed evidence, with extensive quotation of relevant texts and documents. When it was published in 1982 it challenged established ideas in the fields of Romance linguistics and Medieval Latin. The collectively established facts are however explained better by his theory that Medieval Latin was a revolutionary innovation consequent upon liturgical reform, than by the view that it was a miraculous conservative survival that lasted unchanged for a millennium. Late Latin and Early Romance draws on philological, historical and literary evidence from the medieval period, and on historical linguistics, and is a seminal work in these areas of scholarship.

Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France (Arca, 8)

Wright, Roger

Arts & Photography

The Bellum Jugurthinum is the second historical monograph (the other is the Catilina) written by C. Sallustius Crispus (probably 86-35 B.C.), a senator, Caesarian general and historian whose political and literary career spanned the violent years which saw the end of the Roman Republic. The Bellum Jugurthinum describes an earlier war fought in North Africa at the end of the 2nd century B.C. against Jugurtha, an ambitious native prince who tried to win sole power in Numidia by challenging his family's traditional dependence on Rome. The main aims of this commentary are to elucidate Sallust's narrative and to clarify his historiographical principles and methods. Such topics as the chronology and topography of the war, Numidian customs and their royal family, Sallust's sources, the conditions of political life in contemporary Rome, and Sallust's personal views are therefore given ample treatment. Textual, linguistic and literary problems are discussed in so far as they relate to historical and historiographical understanding of Sallust's account. Sallust was indebted to Greek and Roman predecessors, as the commentary indicates. But he also set a new fashion in Roman historiography, as much by his sense of the realities of Roman public life as by the manner of his writing - a style which was later adopted and developed by Tacitus, the great historian of imperial Rome.

A Historical Commentary on Sallust's Bellum Jugurthinum (Arca, 13)

Paul, George M.

Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar, Vol 4, 1983 (Arca, 11)

Girolamo Fracastoro (?1478-1553) was a doctor and scientist, as well as a poet. He was born in the northern Italian city of Verona, into a prominent local family. Verona is at one of the crossroads of Europe, and although Fracastoro's whole life was spent in that vicinity, he maintained a wide circle of friends and correspondents, keeping up-to-date with what was going on elsewhere. Two cataclysmic events - the European voyages to the New World, and the sudden appearance and rapid spread of syphilis - are the combined themes of his greatest literary work. The Syphilis , dedicated to Pietro Bembo, became one of the most celebrated poems of the Renaissance. Soon after its publication (in 1530) Fracastoro was hailed as a major Latin poet, an equal of Virgil. In the first two books of Syphilis Fracastoro not only describes in vivid terms the symptoms and known cures for syphilis, but also presents for the first time his theory of 'contagion', a major breakthrough towards modern understanding of disease. He was later to write a scientific prose treatise De Contagione. The third and final book of the Syphilis gives a highly mythical narrative of the landing of Columbus in the New World. His reason for including this American material was not, as we might suppose, that syphilis was brought from the Americas to Europe, but rather that the New World provided Europe with one of the more useful remedies for syphilis, an extract from a native American wood, guaiacum. In spite of its poetic mode, Fracastoro's account draws in some detail on contemporary sources for the European discovery of the New World, as Eatough's notes show. This edition offers a 35-page introduction, text with facing English translation, notes elucidating literary, mythical, geographical and botanical topics, and a word-index of the poem.

Fracastoro's Syphilis. Introduction, Text, Translation, Notes (Arca, 12)

History

Eatough, Geoffrey

Europe

For this study of sheep-rearing in Roman Italy, Dr. Frayn presents and evaluates material from epigraphy, law, literature, archaeology, painting and sculpture to illuminate the social life of shepherd communities. Throughout, the ancient evidence for Italian practice is supplemented with comparative material from other ancient societies and (where relevant) from more modern farming experience.

Sheep-rearing and the wool trade in Italy during the Roman period (Arca, 15)

Frayn, Joan M.

Ancient Civilizations

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