Did the ancients care when their children died? The question is blunt, but not straightforward. How are we to define ‘care’? Whose children – anyone's, family members', one's own? Any thorough answer must be correspondingly complex, taking into account variables of many different kinds. So, for example, it has been argued that mothers cared for their children more than fathers, that very young children were missed less than older ones, that urban and servile populations tended to commemorate young children with gravestones more than others, that variations in burial practices among Greek communities may ‘suggest varying degrees of affection on the part of the parents’, that care for children increased in the later fifth century in Athens or in the Hellenistic period in Greece or in the later Republic or the Imperial period at Rome. In this paper, I make no claim to the nuanced and sophisticated presentation these difficulties demand; I will present evidence from various genres, referring to diverse places and times, concerning children from a range of ages. My aim is modest: to consider two arguments that have been applied to this subject. My question has been raised several times within the last few years, each time by first-rate scholars, and these have given what I think is clearly the correct answer. Yet that answer has not been expressed as firmly as it might be; and in giving it some have raised an issue which needs clarification. Let these be my excuses for opening the question again.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0017383500033064

Did the Ancients Care When their Children Died

The study of ancient Greek music has held the interest of modem scholarship since the Renaissance, when the widely attested powers of ancient music began to attract the attention of a number of the humanists. From the very first, two subjects within the field of ancient Greek music were seen as especially troublesome and were given particular scrutiny. These are the subjects of harmonia and ethos. The difficulty with these subjects lies in part in the fact that ancient authorities disagree among themselves, and it has therefore seemed that the subjects must remain forever in the realm of philosophical dispute, eluding all attempts at systematization. This is not to say that scholars ignored the subjects. In fact, there have been a number of notable works dealing with these matters, including Girolamo Mei's unpublished De modis musicis antiquorum (autograph in Vaticanus latinus 5323)-dating from the sixteenth century, the beginning of modem scholarship on ancient Greek music-and, more recently, studies by Hermann Wiegandt, A. F. Walter, Hermann Abert, E. M. von Hornbostel, L. P. Wilkinson, James Riley, Edward Lippman, Warren Anderson, J. Garcia L6pez, and Lukas Richter.1 All these works are incisive and combine technical remarks about modes, scales, pitches, and so on, with general philosophical treatments of music and character, but none of these-nor any of the other studies that might be cited-attempts to systematize the ethical characteristics of ancient Greek music or to show a close relationship between harmonia and ethos. Nonetheless, it is possible to develop and demonstrate a reasonably precise system for the analysis of the ethos in pieces of ancient Greek music. This system leans heavily on the De musica of Aristides Quintilianus, which unquestionably provides the most detailed and comprehensive ancient treatment of the subjects of har-

Harmonia and Ethos in Ancient Greek Music

Lost in Egypt's honeycombed hills, distanced by its western desert, or rendered inaccessible by subsequent urban occupation, the monumental decorated tombs of the Graeco-Roman period have received little scholarly attention. This volume serves to redress this deficiency. It explores the narrative pictorial programs of a group of decorated tombs from Ptolemaic and Roman-period Egypt (c.300 BCE–250 CE). Its aim is to recognize the tombs' commonalities and differences across ethnic divides and to determine the rationale that lies behind these connections and dissonances. This book sets the tomb programs within their social, political, and religious context and analyzes the manner in which the multicultural population of Graeco-Roman Egypt chose to negotiate death and the afterlife.

Visualizing the Afterlife in the Tombs of Graeco-Roman Egypt

Virgil's Aeneid includes a number of scenes in which children die in front of their parents. While the motif has a Homeric precedent, Virgil's invention of a formula ( ante ora parentum : "before the faces of one's parents") suggests a particular interest in the theme. An analysis of scenes where the formula recurs (such as Aeneas's shipwreck, the fall of Troy, and the lusus Troiae ) reveals a metapoetic resonance behind the motif, with the parent-child relationship acting as a metaphor for authorial influence and artistic creation. Thus the threat that Aeneas might die as Anchises looks on, for instance, evokes Virgil's own precarious position in relation to his "father," Homer. Aeneas's well-known transition into a father-figure as the poem progresses comes with the risk that he may become the parent who sees his own child die; Virgil exploits this transition, too, as a vehicle for self-reflection, concerned about the reception of his "child," the Aeneid, in the Augustan age.

/pdf/death-ante-ora-parentum-in-virgil-s-aeneid-435xdxfair.pdf

Death ante ora parentum in Virgil's Aeneid

Gell. NA 3.10.13 citing Varro's Hebdomades uel de imaginibus, reports:Venas etiam in hominibus, uel potius arterias, medicos musicos dicere ait numero moueri septenario, quod ipsi appellant τν δι τeσσρων συμφωναν, quae fit in collatione quaternarii 〈et ternarii〉 numeri.He also states that doctors who make use of music theory declare that the veins, or rather arteries, in human beings move in accordance with the number seven; they call this motion ‘the consonance of the fourth’, which is produced by the proportional relation of the numbers four and three.

The harmonious pulse.

Aristides Quintilianus: On Music in Three Books

Das Motiv der Mors immatura in den griechischen metrischen Grabinschriften

Zur Wortstellung und Satzbildung bei Pindar

Denkmäler altgriechischer Musik. Sammlung, Übertragung und Erläuterung aller Fragments und Fälschungen

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Aristides Quintilianus: On Music in Three Books

Das Motiv der Mors immatura in den griechischen metrischen Grabinschriften

Zur Wortstellung und Satzbildung bei Pindar

Denkmäler altgriechischer Musik. Sammlung, Übertragung und Erläuterung aller Fragments und Fälschungen