Platonic Psychology: Delos

Showing posts with label Delos. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Reasoning/Appetitive: The Purification of Delos

My favorite part of Thucydides is the purification of Delos (Thucydides 1.8.1, 3.104.1-2). I know-- it's a little strange. To me, the purification of Delos is a fascinating nexus of religious ritual and early archaeology providing insight into burial practices and the ways that the ancient Greeks viewed the remains of past ages. When I had to propose a paper topic for my Thucydides class, I asked if I could write on the purification of Delos. My professor's response was "nobody cares about the purification of Delos. There aren't any sources on it." When I looked myself just to make sure, I couldn't find anything either.

The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War

This morning, instead of reading the news, something drew me to do a L'Annee Philologique search for the purification of Delos. I only found one source, a short article by Roger Brock called "The Athenian Purification of Delos" (JSTOR), but my quick skim of the article showed me that my interest may not be a completely lost cause. Now I just need to get my hands on the Hornblower commentary on Thucydides...

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Why Platonic Psychology?

Entry types into this blog are divided into three categories: appetitive, spirited, and reasoning to correspond with the three parts of the Platonic conception of the soul. The appetitive portion will most often be humorous content with a classical bent. However, Plato's understanding of appetitive is much broader than that, encompassing the general pleasures of spectacle-- such as theater, both comedy and tragedy-- as well as emotions and bodily pains and pleasures. Sometimes I will stray into one of the more Platonic uses of appetitive. If I can manage it, I will post a weekly translation of a joke or funny phrase into Latin or Greek. The spirited portion (literally timophillic i.e. honor loving) will be my own ideas about Greek and Roman ideas. This section attempts to put me on the map as a classicist with a point of view. The reasoning part will be commentary and reviews on classical texts. I will also try to post a passage for Latin or Greek prose composition, as well as translations of prose passages or poetry in Latin or Greek. I will offer my take on the passage, and if anyone would like to offer their own attempt at the passage, or corrections or criticisms of mine, they will be welcome to do so in a comment on the blogpost or email me at sulpicia3@hotmail.com.

Bread, Roman Poetry, and Other Frivolity

If you're interested in me as well as my commentary about classical texts, visit my personal blog Fragments of Sulpicia (III), in which I discuss my general day-to-day existence, alongside bread recipes, pedagogy, and Roman Love Elegy.

The Roman love elegists, writing at the end of the Roman Republic wrote beautiful poems about their experiences in love, creating the persona or changing the name of a real person on whom to center their poetry. The only extant female poet calls herself Sulpicia, daughter of Servius and constructs her poems around her lover, Cerninthus. In order to write freely, I have taken up her name, Sulpicia, and the names of her characters and the characters of her contemporary love elegists, to refer to people in my own life. A reference list of characters can be found on the righthand side of Fragments of Sulpicia (III).

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Reasoning/Appetitive: The Purification of Delos

History of Philosophy

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