Volume: Volume 7, Issue 1

The Arab World, especially Egypt, is now living in a period of abundant translations into Arabic from the original Greek and Latin texts. This has helped cross the borders and make classical writers accessible to the Arab readers. In this regard, we may distinguish three levels or types of readers in the Arab World: firstly general public, secondly educated and learned amateurs, and thirdly specialized academicians and students. The Arab translator of Latin poetry faces many problems of translation, and accordingly has to handle them, as persuasively as possible, to pave the way for the Arabic translation to meet the demands of the readers, seeking their endorsement. The Arab translator also has to elucidate the cultural context in which a Latin poem was written by enriching his translation with commentaries and notes, otherwise the translation may be meaningless and tasteless to the Arab public audience. The translator, at the same time, cannot help avoiding his (or her) critical sense to be in work during the process of translation. In my present paper, I argue that translating Latin poetry into Arabic is a creative re-construction that involves both critical and cultural perspectives.

The best-known historical character who is connected to Socratic education is Alcibiades. The link between this pedagogical relationship and the ancient notion of παιδεία can be found in almost every author of Σωκρατικοὶ λόγοι. Scholars of ancient philosophy concur that all Socratic works on Alcibiades were meant as a unified response of sorts, on the part of Socrates’ circle, to Polycrates’ Accusation, with the objective of demonstrating Socrates’ innocence. There would seem to be no reason to doubt Socrates’ positive effect on Alcibiades. On the other hand, we cannot question the Alcibiades’ undeniable negative side of Alcibiades. The aim of this paper is to answer a controversial question: how could Socrates the philosopher have been educated by the arrogant Alcibiades? Whereas most contemporary scholars consider Alcibiades solely as a student of Socrates (as receiving a Socratic education), we approach the matter from the other way around: we wish to establish the extent to which Alcibiades acted on Socrates, in a certain sense, thus educating him (even if unintentionally). In our paper, we focus on Aeschines’ and Plato’s portrayals of Alcibiades.

The article attempts to present basic elements of political ideology that can be found on the choral performances of the Aristophanes’ comedy named “Plutus”, which is his last surviving work. The comedy was presented to the Athenian audience in 388 BC to glorify and demonstrate the unfair distribution of wealth and the social inequalities, while highlighting the decline of human values. In spite of the fact that in this work the Chorus has a diminished role nevertheless refers to the unjust distribution of wealth and the explosion of corruption with an interesting kinesiological approach.

My paper focusses on the treatment of the triumph as a metaphor for poetic glory in Ovid. In the Augustan poetry the triumph theme is treated predominantly from a political perspective, but images and situations of the ceremony are also used from a literary point of view. Ovid in particular gives this topic original and ambiguous features.