Browsing by Author "Van Stekelenburg, A. V."

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The Cape in Latin and Latin in the Cape in the 17th and 18th centuries
    (Stellenbosch University, Department of Ancient Studies, 2003) Van Stekelenburg, A. V.; Claassen, J. M.
    Different authors work in different ways. Bert van Stekelenburg would usually choose a new topic that interested him, do initial, sometimes fairly cursory, research on the subject, give one or more public lectures and/or read a fairly brief scholarly paper and then spend some years refining the topic by means of extensive research in both local and overseas libraries, carefully building up a scholarly argument in the manner of a sculptor in clay, whose work in the end would be cast in bronze — the scholarly publication that followed. This paper started as a public lecture to the Western Cape branch of the Classical Association of South Africa in March 2002. It had flowed from previous research done on an interesting Latinist who lived at the Cape, Jan Willem (“Johannes Guilielmus”) Van Grevenbroek, on whose life Bert had been working since 1997. After a lecture series was initiated by a paper read at Avila in Spain in 1997, several more popular lectures followed. This research culminated in a scholarly publication, “Een intellectueel in de vroege Kaapkolonie. De nalatenschap van Jan Willem van Grevenbroek (1644-1726)” Tydskrif vir Nederlands en Afrikaans 8, 2001, 3-34. Bert was working on this present article just before he left for his last, fateful ornithological expedition, using the computers of various friends, including that of his present editor, but after his death we have been unable to find the diskette on which he had kept this article, which had seemed to be almost completed. Also, no printouts have been found. This version is the editor’s attempt to make sense of the body of Bert’s talk (of which several versions in his handwriting exist) as well as the copious scholarly notes in English, Afrikaans and Dutch (which he had been in the process of incorporating) and the texts of various poems and other citations that he had used at the March 2002 lecture. Every attempt has been made to keep to the author’s style and contents as he envisaged them and not to allow the editor’s personal opinion to intrude into the paper (Editor).
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Ianus Vitalis : In Christophorum Columbum Portait of a hero
    (Stellenbosch University, Department of Ancient Studies, 2009) Schneider, M.; Van Stekelenburg, A. V.
    The discovery of the New World at the end of the 15th century tested the traditional assumptions, beliefs, and attitudes of Renaissance Europe. Although the literary response during the 16th century showed a great deal of diversity in its appreciation and evaluation of the discovery, the standards and references used were inevitably those derived from an inherited classical and Christian tradition. The discussion below will focus on Ianus Vitalis’ poem In Christophorum Columbum — a literary example of 16th century Italian perceptions and attitudes relating to the discovery of the New World.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Whistling in antiquity
    (Stellenbosch University, Department of Ancient Studies, 2000) Van Stekelenburg, A. V.
    Plocamus, one of the guests at Trimalchio’s dinner-party, when encouraged by his host to give proof of his histrionic and musical talents, is only too keen to oblige: oppositaque ad os manu nescio quid taetrum exsibilavit quod postea Graecum esse affirmabat (“and he put his hand to his mouth and whistled out some terrible stuff I couldn’t identify. Afterwards he told us it was a Greek air”; transl. Lindsay 1960). If we were to pose ourselves the question whether antiquity knew the phenomenon of people whistling tunes, this episode from Petronius’ Satyricon (64.5) seems to provide us with an affirmative answer. Unfortunately, however, though most translators take exsibilavit here to mean “whistled”, it is also possible that the verb is used by Petronius in a metaphorical sense, as it is by others (Seneca De Ira 3.4), to describe a squeaky voice. And this possibility dashes our hope of ever finding an answer to the question whether Greeks and Romans did whistle tunes, because this episode in Petronius is the only one that seemed to hold a promise of providing us with a positive answer. It must be added, though, that such an answer would here in any case not be satisfying. Plocamus would have been doing what Hesychius calls αὐλωλάζειν: τό συρίττειν διὰ τῶν δακτύλων (“whistling through the fingers”) i.e. imitating the sound of a flute (αὐλός) while using one’s fingers as a substitute for an instrument. This is a different way of whistling from that which one practices purely with the lips, which is the kind of whistling in which we are interested here.