Search results for "Ancient Greek"

The Greeks in the West: genetic signatures of the Hellenic colonisation in southern Italy and Sicily

2015

Greek colonisation of South Italy and Sicily (Magna Graecia) was a defining event in European cultural history, although the demographic processes and genetic impacts involved have not been systematically investigated. Here, we combine high-resolution surveys of the variability at the uni-parentally inherited Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA in selected samples of putative source and recipient populations with forward-in-time simulations of alternative demographic models to detect signatures of that impact. Using a subset of haplotypes chosen to represent historical sources, we recover a clear signature of Greek ancestry in East Sicily compatible with the settlement from Euboea during the…

Differential Greek and northern African migrations to Sicily are supported by genetic evidence from the Y chromosome

2009

The presence or absence of genetic heterogeneity in Sicily has long been debated. Through the analysis of the variation of Y-chromosome lineages, using the combination of haplogroups and short tandem repeats from several areas of Sicily, we show that traces of genetic flows occurred in the island, due to ancient Greek colonization and to northern African contributions, are still visible on the basis of the distribution of some lineages. The genetic contribution of Greek chromosomes to the Sicilian gene pool is estimated to be about 37% whereas the contribution of North African populations is estimated to be around 6%. In particular, the presence of a modal haplotype coming from the southern…

Recensione di S. Lanna, Mesomede. Inno a Physis. Introduzione, testo critico, traduzione e commento (Roma: Quasar, 2013).

2017

The Role of Ciphering in Phenomenology of Life

2004

Contemporary philosophy is inseparable from the general tendencies of spiritual life that have dominated over the past centuries. The ruling tendency of European-type philosophy has been the affirmation of a democratic life style, liberal values and human individuality and creative activity. The testimony to this is the proportional growth of the philosophy of subjectivism since modern times, the division of pure practical reason and reasoning into separate spheres to substantiate fundamental human abilities, to analyse the ways of grasping the world — such as cognition, understanding, intuition, deciphering, experience — and describe man’s correlation with beingness (cosmos). Epistemology …

The Pythagoreans and the Therapeutic Effects of the Paean between Religion, Paideia and Politics

2016

The interest of the Early Pythagoreans in musical speculation appears in literary sources as strictly linked with religion and education. The use of paeans for healing and calming both rage and anger among the Pythagoreans (see for instance Iamblichus, De vita pythagorica 110; Porphyrius, Vita Pythagorae 30) shows that catharsis was meant within such groups as a “purification” from every kind of excess in which religion, medicine and ethics were blended together in order to provide a harmonious order within the individuals. Music and musical education in Pythagorean communities had also a “political” role, since they were intended to foster social order.

Dramme, didrammi e tetradrammi di Panormos e a legenda ṣyṣ nel V secolo a.C.: aggiornamenti e riflessioni intorno alle sequenze dei conî

2019

The main objective of this essay is to comment upon the modes of production and the datings of the 5th century BC non-fractional silver coinage bearing the Greek legend ΠΑΝΟΡΜΟΣ (and variants) and the Punic legend ṣyṣ. The reconstruction of the die sequences published by G. Kenneth Jenkins in 1971 and its recent updates will be discussed in detail. As far as the identification of the issuing authority and of the minting place of the coins with legend ṣyṣ is concerned, for a long time to the center of the scientific research interests, only the inferences made from an analysis of the die sequence have been taken into consideration.

L'anima degli animali. Aristotele, frammenti stoici, Plutarco, Porfirio

2015

E' lecito maltrattare gli animali? E mangiarli? Molto del dibattito odierno sulla natura e sui diritti degli animali ha avuto prodromi antichi, anche se con categorie diverse dalle nostre. Il libro è una selezione di testi chiave sul tema, ritradotti per l'occasione e accompagnati da un commento storico-filologico, aprendo suggestive connessioni con la modernità. Il volume raccoglie l'ottavo e il nono libro della Historia animalium di Aristotele, i frammenti degli stoici sugli animali, i tre trattati di Plutarco sul vegetarianismo e sulla "questione animale" (il De esu carnium, il Bruta animalia ratione uti e il De sollertia animalium) e il De abstinentia di Porfirio

Auxiliaries

2014

The prototypical auxiliary in Ancient Greek is eimí “to be”, which is involved in some participial periphrases conveying aspectual value and variously interacting with the synthetic forms within the inflectional paradigm. However, many other verbs are involved in the Greek periphrastic constructions, although their status as auxiliaries is still a matter of debate. Resent research in grammaticalization allows to describe the entire range of such verbs in prototypical terms, that is, as a coherent category which includes more central and peripheral, i.e. less grammaticalized members.

The history of human-induced soil erosion: Geomorphic legacies, early descriptions and research, and the development of soil conservation—A global sy…

2013

Abstract This paper presents a global synopsis about the geomorphic evidence of soil erosion in humid and semihumid areas since the beginning of agriculture. Historical documents, starting from ancient records to data from the mid-twentieth century and numerous literature reviews form an extensive assortment of examples that show how soil erosion has been perceived previously by scholars, land surveyors, farmers, land owners, researchers, and policy makers. Examples have been selected from ancient Greek and Roman Times and from central Europe, southern Africa, North America, the Chinese Loess Plateau, Australia, New Zealand, and Easter Island. Furthermore, a comprehensive collection on the …

The Stochastic Intelligence. A Technical Model from Ancient Greece to Robotics

2019

What do we mean when we talk about the “intelligence” of robots? In what sense does a robot “reason” and “take decisions”? Answering these questions can give food for thought towards understanding whether there is either something so specific in human beings that cannot be reproduced in robots, or—as an alternative—the way to improve robots in emulating human behavior. In the following pages I will try to give my contribution by shedding light on some characteristics concerning human reasoning and rationality, mainly referring to the ancient Greek philosophical tradition.