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Cerberus

01:00

@cmw Oh, yeah, I've always wondered about how certain commentaries seem to be about references/allusions.

cmw

01:33

@Cerberus Not all do that, but many do.

Cerberus

@cmw I figure they can often be trusted: such a thing is impossible to prove, but often quite obvious when you're really into a text, as commentators are.

cmw

@Cerberus It can be tricky. When I was dissertating, I made sure to back up any claims of allusions with more evidence than just similarity of words. Even then, one never knows if something was lost and functioned as an intermediary.

Are they quoting Homer? Or are they quoting someone who quoted Homer? Though Homer might be a bad example, because everyone read him and seemed to have known him fairly thoroughly.

Cerberus

01:49

@cmw Yeah that is often another possibility.

In my thesis, I also explained why I felt a passage in I think Avitus referred to Lucretius, about the discovery of metals.

There were many the same words in a pair of limited passages in the authors.

cmw

@Cerberus Yeah, that's a good indication.

Either Lucretius or someone quoting Lucretius.

Cerberus

I would count a quotation of a quotation as a reference to Lucretius!

Both passages were about the discovery of metals.

cmw

@Cerberus Yes, ultimately you're right. I was thinking in terms of whether Avitus had actually read Lucretius.

Cerberus

@cmw That is often hard to know for certain!

cmw

02:05

@Cerberus Impossible unless they state it. Only then is it beyond reasonable doubt.

Cerberus

Yeah.

Even an obscure author may have been less obscure than we now know.

cmw

02:32

@Cerberus Fortunately, quite a few extant and lost authors are named along with their works, so while the picture is far from complete, we're not completely in the dark.

Cerberus

Yes, what I meant was, even if we see what seems to be a reference to an obscure author, we cannot assume that this author was never quoted or paraphrased in an intermediate source.

cmw

@Cerberus Right. I don't disagree. I meant more that fortunately sometimes that's documented.

So we know about Nicholas of Damascus, even though his works are lost, because he was used extensively by Josephus.

1 hour later…

cmw

04:10

@Cerberus Worth a read: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_failing

(Quality variable, just like much of Wikipedia.)

E.g., you have an especially odd editor at the "Outside scientific..." section.

4 hours later…

tony

08:19

@Joonas: What is "CW"?

Joonas Ilmavirta

09:01

@tony Community Wiki. It means a post (question or answer) that everyone is free to edit and nobody gets reputation points for.

2 hours later…

Latin Language Meta

10:44

Q: Announcing a “Graduation” election for 2022

Summary: Latin Language Stack Exchange will begin the nomination stage for an election on August 15th, as your “graduation” election as a result of having lost your beta label a while back. The timeline: On August 8th, I'll post a question collection post on Meta, so that the community can post ...

tony

10:56

@Joonas: Thanks. In the forthcoming election, if the four current Moderators stand, and Adam wants to, that's five. Won't that dilute the votes? What if members of the electorate were allowed to vote for two candidates? Just a thought.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@tony You will be allowed to vote for three, in an order of preference.

One of the points of a competitive election is to provide a real choice. If there are as many candidates as seats, then arguably the users don't get to elect their moderators. Given that the position is permanent, we don't want that.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if we saw even more candidates. We have a fairly certain list of 5, and we might see 7 or so in the end.

tony

@Joonas: Changing the subject: how are ex-pat Russians being treated, in Finland, at the moment? Have there been any changes on the Russian side of the Russo-Finnish border--fortifications appearing; more difficult, bureaucratically, to cross that border? The Russians are probably too pre-occupied, at the moment, to change anything. I despair of this war--how can it be brought to an end--such that it doesn't flare-up again one year down the road...after some phoney peace?

@Joonas: Three candidates? Sounds good.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@tony No, that would mean 7 candidates. What happens in this election (and only this election) is that all the current moderators are thrown out and the team is elected anew. I think 7 candidates for 4 posts would make sense.

@tony I haven't seen a change in that. We continue to treat Russian people well, because they as individuals aren't responsible for the events. Russian institutions are treated differently, and ties are being cut left and right.

There has been some talk about strengthening our border fortifications, but that's not really a news item. We do invest in that stuff anyway. The Finnish Defence Forces keep fortifications in check and buy land for that purpose and the Finnish Border Guard updates their technology and capability, and both have been doing so forever.

9 hours later…