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• The Question of Life and Death by Cicero and Macrobius

  31–41

  Orsolya Tóth

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  105

  To Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis Macrobius prepared a Neoplatonic commentary in Late Antiquity. On the grounds of these two works and Cicero’s other political or philosophical writings and letters this study seeks an answer to the question what similarities and differences can be demonstrated between the two authors’ way of thinking as regards the nature of the virtues, the issue of vita activa and vita contemplativa, the meaning of life and the necessity of voluntary death.

• Callidus and Comedy: a New Argument for an Old Etymology

  341-349

  Benjamin Adam Jerue

  Views:

  148

  In the corpora of republican authors and the glosses of late antique grammarians, the lexemes callidus and calliditas are used to describe a certain variety of intelligence, which is often translated into English as “cleverness” or “cunning.” This paper looks more closely at these lexemes in order to explain how the root call- (“hard”) came to be associated with mental capacity and acuity. In short, I argue that the type of intelligence that callidus originally denoted ought to be linked to the brutal treatment of slaves and the coping mechanisms that they had to develop in light of their condition as chattel. Not only is this violent form of education depicted in Plautus’ comedies, but its implications and logic can also be found in later authors such as Cicero.