Secondary lit Flashcards
Moseley on Plato’s view of physical beauty
‘Plato thinks that most people sadly squander the real power of love by limiting themselves to the mere pleasures of physical beauty.’
KJ Dover on Greek cultural context and what is seen as a model relationship
‘complex relationship which comprises mutual devotion, reciprocal sacrifice, emulation and the awakening of sensibility, imagination and intellect’,
‘the physical act as the lowest ingredient’ of a relationship
KJ Dover on Plato and sex
‘much Greek philosophy is characterised by contempt for sexual intercourse’
Moseley on Plato and the concept of higher love between appreciation of the physical
‘we should aspire beyond the particular stimulating image in front of us to the contemplation of beauty in itself.’
Ferrari emphasising how Plato’s view is unclear
“Plato is not concerned to propound a comprehensive and unified theory of love”
Motto on Seneca’s views of love
“Love is an undiluted emotion conferred with magnanimity and it does not look to personal convenience”
Reeve on Plato and his context
“The erotic world of Plato’s dialogues is in part, of course, just that of his society”
Karanika on Sappho and girls growing up
“She addressed more than anyone the transition from girlhood to womanhood”
Karanika on Sappho and marriage
“She deeply communicates the female anxiety towards marriage”
Karanika on the appeal of Sappho
“The universality of emotion is why she is so enduring”
Stehle on Sappho’s views of reciprocity in a relationship
“Sappho does not picture love relations as domination by one partner over the other […] desire is mutual”
Burnett on Sappho Loeb 22
“Loeb 22 perfectly exemplifies the Sapphic law that beauty demands love and in turn creates the beautiful”
Liz Gloyn on Seneca and reconciling love and stoicism
‘Seneca believes it’s possible to love another human without giving into irrationality’
Liz Gloyn on Seneca and benefits of marriage
‘A marriage based on virtue and reason thus produces more virtue and reason’
Irvine on Seneca and later stoics
“He and later stoics stressed the regulation of emotions rather than their denial”
Greene on Ovid pt2
“The rejection of Augustus’ religious, moral and agricultural reform as vulgar and risible”- on part 2
Greene on Ovid’s disgust of women
“In their natural, unmasked state, women are fundamentally, not just uncivilised but disgusting”
Greene on Ovid makeup
“The only passage to survive from antiquity that seems to be a recommendation of makeup”
Greene on Ovid Roman context
“Recalls the swinging upper-class love affairs of the late Republic”
Bishop on Ovid as a reliable source
His views “lack sincerity”
Liz Gloyn on Seneca’s views on love
“neither good nor bad; it’s how you use it that matters” -
Page DuBois on Sappho female voice
one of the few texts which break the silence of women in antiquity […] women become more than the objects of man’s desire.”
Watson on Sappho’s descriptive writing
‘the rose-like fragrance of her wasted feelings’
Lefkowitz on Sappho as a female, emotional poet
Many critics of Sappho believed ‘women poets are emotionally disturbed, so their poems are psychological outpourings, that is, not intellectual but ingenuous artless, concerned with their inner emotional lives’
Anna Motto on Seneca and his family’s influence
Seneca learned a lot about love, kindness and generosity from his family. Namely his mother, Helvia, who taught him unselfishness: ‘your kindness never stemmed from self-interest’.
