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New Book Of Course, Kelsay Books’ imprint of my book “Of Course,” (108 pp) is available from the publisher, Kelsay Books, and is now also live on Amazon and can be found by clicking the blue title just above or going to Amazon and typing “Allen Tice” into the search line. It’s $19, and if you buy a few things by another poet or something eligible that you like, the shipping can be free. I accept non-junk email at atclassics382@nyct.net. I hope it will get to Amazon UK, since Michael Hulse, who wrote one blurb, is a Brit who published me in The Leviathan Quarterly. Hulse is well known and an accomplished editor and poet otherwise (see Wikipedia). The second, classical language-oriented blurb, by Columbia University’s Gareth Williams, is especially kind. * * * * On 21 August 21 I received my proof copy of my 100 page first book of verse called “Of Course,”, which will be available from the publisher, Kelsay Books, and on Amazon for approximately $20.00 within a month or so. I will make a further announcement once the final fixes are done. Much of “Of Course,” is traditional, even old-fashioned, with some Latin, Greek, and German translations, and one translation each from Spanish and Chinese. There are nice dust jacket blurbs by a Columbia University classics professor and the British poet Michael Hulse on the back cover: “That cheering you hear is the blessèd in the Elysian fields rejoicing that at last there’s a poet worth reading once again. Allen Tice has informed poise and wit in a time that has almost forgotten such qualities. A classical temperament in an age of ketchup and supermodels, he has language, and languages, and the riches of poetry, at his fingertips. These poems simply fizz with the fun of it all. Michael Hulse, editor of Stand, Leviathan Quarterly and The Warwick Review, and co-editor of The Twentieth Century in Poetry.” ———— “Tice’s literary translations combine grace with wit and sober style with sparkle while also capturing the seriousness that underlies the ease of flow in a Horace or a Sappho. Verve and dash lend pace and color to Tice’s verses, but only as further adornments to his Muse’s defining gravitas. Gareth D. Williams, Columbia University Department of Classics.” ————- See you again soon. December 04 2020: What I’m writing about here is not the so-called holy grail (as in Monty Python and THC – sorry, THG), but something else that only a Latin or Greek semi-classicist like me could love. By using two stacked bifocals on my head combined with a binocular jeweler’s loupe, and holding the magnifier for my compact Oxford English Dictionary, that in combination all together amounted to about ninety diameters enlargement, I located something and marked it with a green “sharpie” pen on a coffee mug which I recently purchased for $19.99 from “RomaOptima.com” that bears a truly nano-scopic reproduction of the Latin text (with damaged letters too) of the Res Divi Augusti (or Accomplishments of the [Divine] Emperor Augustus) So, what’s that to me, or you in AD/CE 2020? Well, for years many people have said that the census account in what is called the New Testament is incorrect because no census was recorded for or near 1 BC or 1 AD. (There is no year “zero” in the world wide calendar.) And the real question is, Is this important now? The matter that interested me was the relatively recent acceptance by the then Pope in 2012 in his book “Jesus of Nazareth” what nerds more informed than myself had been saying for years. That is, that our secular calendar that is based on calculations by the sixth century monk known as Dionysius Exiguus (or in English, Dennis the Small) is wrong by up to eight years. Dionysius added up a lot of poorly recorded intervals and made a mistake because the available records were rather sketchy. Furthermore, multiplication and division are almost impossible to do with Roman numerals. Romans used an abacus which is quite fast for adding and subtracting and wrote down what they got. (Multiplication is like shorthand addition.) So what Dionysius thought was the year 525 was most likely 532 or 531. This redating fits with eclipse records, coins, and the widespread stone census records of the second (2nd) of Augustus’s three (3) pedestrian speed “censuses of all the world” that began in “8 BCE” (“Before Common/Christian Era”). I said “pedestrian speed” because communication from the eastern Mediterranean to Rome took a long time on land or by boats that hugged the coasts and sailed only in good seasons. The names of the Roman consuls for the second census of Augustus are given on this mug and in books. Of the books I have, the best is Res Gestae Divi Augusti; Text, Translation, and Commentary, by Alison E. Cooley, published by the University of Cambridge, 2009, see pp 66-67, which has the texts with the damaged letters identified so that reading the mug was much easier. A less useful version is Res Gestae Divi Augusti; The Achievements of the Divine [to the Romans] Augustus, edited by P.A. Brunt and J.M. Moore, Oxford University Press, 1967 [and continually], pp 22-23. The relevant sentence is: tum [iter]um consulari cum imperio lustrum [s]olus feci C(aio) Censorino [et C(aio) Asinio] co(n)s(ulibus), quo lustro censa sunt civium Romanorum [capit]a quadragiens centum millia at ducenta trigenta tria m[illia]. Parentheses indicate Roman abbreviations; brackets show damaged stone letters. A Greek translation with different damaged points exists in modern Turkey. The Cambridge translation reads: “Then for a second time I conducted a census on my own with consular power in the consulship of Gaius Censorinus and Gaius Asinius [8 BC]; in this census registered 4,233,000 individual Roman citizens.” Of course, Roman “citizens” were a smallish percentage of the entire population. What’s particularly nice is that the relevant spot on the mug is shown in the picture just above in lines six through ten in the column just below the words “AVGUSTI” and “ROMANUM”. I should warn you that the website https://romaoptima.com/collections/all seems to be currently experiencing difficulties which doesn’t make purchasing your own mug easy. I found a link by chance for the mug and used it in September 2020. However, at the top there’s an online picture of what I got. I accept non-junk email at atclassics382@nyct.net. =================================== July 31, 2020: While continuing to develop material on Valerius Catullus for an article or two – specifically the difficult records that survive about his dates – I want to mention that next July I will have a 6×9 paperback book of my verse and translations – called “Of Course,” – coming out from Kelsay Press. A fair amount of its content is of translations that attempt to re-establish Greco-Roman rhythms in English poetry. There are also a couple of translations from Spanish and Middle High German. Apart from these translations, the rest of “Of Course,” contains my original efforts, some of which use or slightly vary Greco-Roman rhythmic patterns that I like, and the rest are in more modern forms. I do like rhyme. And sweet rhythm. In the future, I will post more about this book: “Of Course,”, and how it can be gotten at a reasonable price from the publisher, from me, and from Amazon. It is basically a book intended to give pleasure to the reader, and I hope many readers will enjoy “Of Course,”. There’s something about a book. Hope to see you in July. I invite the visitor to think about my page, “I’m not promoting Ikea, but . . .”.
On October 12, 2019, I presented a little papillon of a paper to the Classical Association of the Atlantic States (CAAS) on efforts to solve the problem of when the Roman poet Catullus was born and passed on. He’s the author of Odi et amo – “I hate and I love,” as well as searingly hostile feelthy squibs about Julius Caesar and his team (rather like a series of very naughty, sharp, and sometimes hilarious Latin limericks could be). Also some funny stuff, like #13 about a perfume that makes the smeller want to be entirely a nose. I was rewriting and correcting the room handout almost until we boarded the Amtrak train. Be that as it may, the presentation went quite well, and was digitally movied by a daughter. Jayne Osborn’s help from last year and help and shoving from others last year were important. My friend from Columbia University’s Classics Department, Gareth Williams, has a jolly little footnote. I’m still sandpapering the message, and dare to think the paper just might eventually advance general knowledge a smidge about who kissed whom in Rome and other stuff in the late 50s BC and maybe a squeak later. Fun it was. Latinists and others, I seem to have made it into the Classical Association of the Middle West and South-SS (CAMWS Southern Section) Meeting in Winston Salem, NC, courtesy of Wake Forest University, at the crack of dawn October 18, 2018. It will be at the Hawthorne Inn Conference Center. Interested visitors are invited. For details, contact me by email [atclassics382@nyct.net], CAMWS, or the Hawthorne. The short paper is on the advantages of heavily re-evaluating St. Jerome’s impossible dates for the life of Valerius Catullus, and consequently Jerome’s stated age of 29 or 30 years for Catullus at his death. There is enough evidence to make a plausible case that what survives of St. Jerome’s data is very flawed, but to ballast my case, I would appreciate any information you have on : (A) questions about the reliability and inaccuracies of Suetonius (a source for Jerome) — i.e. evidence that Suetonius yielded to Imperial political pressure and shaded facts — or bought rumor as facts, for instance his sneering remarks about “Horace’s villa” (which I have physically seen), (B) questions on the reliability and general inaccuracies of Ovid (his sloppiness and cavalier attitude toward data wherever (like the Forum Romanum, Tomis, etc.) — and his tendencies to stretch for literary impact, euphony, or anti-Imperial political “dog whistles”), and (C) other chronological errors in St Jerome’s Chronicon. Additionally, I am interested in examples of errors in copying Roman numerals through the ages or unusual formats for certain numbers. An example of the last is writing “38” as “xxxiix” in the period of Tiberius (see “Cornerstone” page on this site). Here’s a link to the CAMWS program: http://southernsection.camws.org/sit…018Program.pdf WHAT IS CAMWS SOUTHERN SECTION? Since 1920, members of CAMWS who reside in the Southern states (MO, AR, TX, LA, OK, KY, TN, MS, AL, WV, VA, NC, SC, GA, FL) have enjoyed a separate organization (with no additional dues) called the Southern Section. The primary purpose is to provide an additional meeting opportunity in the South in alternate years, when the CAMWS meeting is in the Northern states; these meetings are held in the fall, generally in October. In addition, the Southern Section works closely with the officers of CAMWS to promote the study of Classics in the states of the Southern Section, including strengthening of ties between schools and colleges, and donation of funds for scholarships and government advocacy. A group membership is also maintained in the Southern Humanities Council. All Best, |
When Did Catullus Die: Some Thoughts Against the Grain.
October 8, 2016 The Spectator [UK]
“We must wholeheartedly believe in free will. If free will is a reality, we shall have made the correct choice. If it is not, we shall still have not made an incorrect choice, because we shall not have made any choice at all, not having a free will to do so.”
E. N. Lorenz (MIT). The Essence of Chaos (Univ. of Washington Press, 1993), p 160. In AAAS Science 23 May 2008: Vol 320, no 5879, p 1025.
Please don’t think that the quote from Lorenz excuses what we call psychopaths.
It does not !
Responsibility stands alongside freedom. To make a choice means that you have chosen to address its results as well, as far as you can foresee them. When you revise a choice, this is just as true.
Valerius Catullus Studies
During the Fall 2016 meeting of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States, on October 21st in New Brunswick, NJ, I delivered a quarter-hour paper (followed by Q&A) on the relationship between the Latin poem known as [Valerius] Catullus 63 and ancient posh (and pleb) Roman political life in the time of Cicero and pre-Rubicon Julius Caesar. As with the CAMWS meeting mentioned just below, the entire program went very well. Old friends were there, and new ones were made.
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During April 2-5, 2014, I delivered a short paper on the Latin poet Valerius Catullus at the 110th annual convention of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South USA (CAMWS) at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. I salute every one of the participants I met and heard at the convention. The entire program went very well.
A thought :
On the Internet, if it’s “free” — you aren’t the customer : you are the product.
To contact me, I offer the e-mail address : atclassics382@nyct.net . (I receive large amounts of Internet spam, and any serious inquiries from you that are made as blog replies will be, alas, automatically deleted. All “blog” replies will be ignored.) Even so, I invite interested visitors to return to the site from time to time if you like.…………………..
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxJuly 22, 2017 The Spectator [UK]
? I have two translations of epigrams from Archaic and Hellenistic Greek by “Phocylides” that have appeared in the Winter 2012 issue on p 51 of the Classical Outlook (published by the American Classical League). Phocylides was born about 550 BC in the Archaic period, but Phocylides can’t have written at least one of these epigrams since it uses the phrase “kai tode” (“and this is by …”) that dates it from later than his lifetime. The “kai tode” piece is in the elegiac couplet meter, and the other epigram is two dactylic hexameters, but I attempt elegiac couplets in both translations. The actual Phocylides likely had several imitators. The “kai tode” couplet is witty and states in so many words that it is by Phocylides, so it is too bad that it must be a forgery. Exactly the same language occurs in other preachy imitations of Phocylides, but the translated example is ironic and pokes fun at the rest while teasing a particular individual. There is no way to tell if the hexameter epigram is genuine. (Here is a great book, by the way: The Yogi Book: I Really Didn’t Say Everything I Said.)
? I also have a nontechnical hard-copy essay on pp 40-47 of the August/September 2012 issue of a British literary publication, The London Magazine. This was a speculative discussion (subject to refinement) of the history of the only surviving manuscript of Valerius Catullus, a Latin poet who was acquainted with Julius Caesar and wrote before any of the several occasions when Caesar was appointed as Dictator. In the United Kingdom and wherever The London Magazine is sold, you would have ‘looked in your news agent’ starting August 2, 2012. Outside the Euro-Zone, At the time of publication, it would have cost you a very well-spent £ 13.95. They do take credit cards..
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The photo shows whimsical carvings above a doorway to the Duomo (Cathedral) in Verona, Italy.
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My main attention is on the production end of things, and not on the ‘show-off’ end. Thank you very much for your patience.
I am not using this site as a blog. Please do not act on the automated invitation to make a reply that appears just below. I do not read any of the mostly commercial spam responses that come to this site. ..
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