The author explores the ancient Egyptian religion’s perspective on value of a human life during the latter part of the Old Kingdom, the First Intermediate Period, and the Middle Kingdom. Polytheistic ritualistic “communal” religions, where ethics did not play a significant role, are typical for the epoch of early antiquity, and the Egyptian views discussed in the article mostly align with this context. It was believed that the gods were concerned about the Egyptian people’s safety and well-being primarily because these were indispensable preconditions for abundant provisions and seamless performance of divine cults. Created ultimately to produce and offer sacrificial gifts to the gods, the Egyptians were kind of their “flock”, “the gods’ (little) livestock”. However, the gods were thought to have little involvement in the individual lives of the king’s subjects: their benevolent attention was focused on the pharaoh, who personified the state. Since the king formally was the sole authorized performer of liturgical rituals, Egyptian religion had a pronounced communal nature that hindered the development of the concept of a man’s enduring personal connection with a deity. Within this framework, moral excellence was deemed essential for an individual to gain favor with the ruler, whereas divine recompence during one’s lifetime for piety and virtue was deemed hardly predictable.

   The idea that fear of death forms the basic motivation for cultural and religious practices has gained attention of cognitive science and has been experimentally tested in recent decades. It is now known as the terror management theory (TMT). However, the idea itself was influential in scholarship at least since the 19^th century and has had a significant impact on Egyptology throughout its history. In this article classical and modern works on ancient Egyptian religion and funeral practices are analyzed in order to highlight peculiarities of Egyptological reliance on the topos of fear of death. It can be noted that the use of the category of beneficiary for analysis of funerary literature and ritual is connected with the notion of benefit as a deliverance from fear of death. This perspective on benefits played its role in the formulation of the “democratization of the Afterlife” theory. The model centered on the idea of the orderliness of the world, proposed by J. Assmann, is considered as an alternative approach. It can be further developed in light of the compensatory control theory (CCT). Assmann limited himself to the study of religion as communication with gods. This paper explores funerary practices within the framework of ‘religion as propagation of Maat’. Finally, such specific traits of Egyptian funerary practices as threat-formulae, letters to the dead and heart amulets are analyzed as modes of execution of personal and compensatory control.

   The article is devoted to the use of the logogram ^LÚ(.MEŠ)MAŠ.EN.KAK in Hittite texts. This logogram was borrowed from Mesopotamian cuneiform, in which it rendered the Akkadian word muškēnum (lit. ‘the one who bows down, performs proskynesis’). In 1950 E. Laroche showed that the logogram should be read as ašiwant- ‘poor’ in Hittite. However, subsequently several scholars have pointed out that this meaning did not fit well into many contexts. Therefore it was suggested that ^LÚ(.MEŠ)MAŠ.EN.KAK was rather a social term referring to a certain group of Hittite population dependent of the state (‘palace’) (V. Souček, I. M. Diakonoff). Such renderings of the logogram as ‘semi-free, dependent, serfs, servants’ which are widely used in the literature conform with this interpretation. But there seem to be insufficient evidence in the sources to substantiate these translations. The article analyses two texts from ancient Tapikka (HKM 8, 105) which were not yet known in the 1960^s when the main study on the Hittite ^LÚ(.MEŠ)MAŠ.EN.KAK appeared. It is suggested that the solution should be sought in the Mesopotamian tradition of the Old Babylonian time in which the Akkadian equivalent of the logogram, the noun muškēnum, denoted commoners, ordinary citizens economically independent of the palace.

   In the scholia vetera for Hesiod’s poem Works and Days, 35 verses are explained with a reference to Homer’s poems and one verse is commented on with a reference to Homer as Hesiod’s rival in a poetic contest. As a rule, scholia do not contain argumentation or references to sources, so scholia that use references to another text as an argument stand out and are interesting material for research. For Hesiod’s Works and Days, the main precedent texts, i. e. texts used to interpret the main one, are the Iliad and the Odyssey, which is explained by the traditional perception in antiquity of Hesiod and Homer as close, even related authors. Using Diaz Lavado’s proposed classification of Homeric quotations in Plutarch’s treatises as the basis for our approach, we consider the references to Homer in the corpus of antique scholia to Works and Days from the point of view of their function: whether they serve to embellish the commentary or do they in fact help to clarify the meaning of Hesiod’s text. Our study shows that Homer’s poems are mostly referred to in order to clarify Works and Days (32 verses are commented in this way) — realities, meanings of words and various points which probably needed clarification already in the Hellenistic era. The ancient scholiasts perceive the Homeric texts as the basis for Hesiod’s use of mythological, historical, linguistic and figurative material, and in constructing their own reflections they themselves actively rely on Homeric material. Only in three cases the appeal to the Homeric texts likely serves exclusively to demonstrate the scholiasts’ knowledge of Homeric texts and points to the most famous fragments of Homeric poems cited in antiquity.

   The task of this short paper is to show, using the example of v. 10–11 of Pindar’s Fifth Pythian Ode, that the semantics of the verb καταιθύσσω is misunderstood, and that this erroneous understanding has been recorded in almost all dictionaries, starting with the dictionary LSJ.

   As a result, the meaning of many poetic contexts, where the verb αἰθύσσω and its variants with prefixes appear, is distorted, losing the metaphor embedded in them. Analysis of the etymology and semantics of the group αἰθύσσω — ἀναιθύσσω — διαιθύσσω — καταιθύσσω — παραιθύσσω leads to the conclusion that “fire/ignition” is a basic seme of the semantic spectrum of the verb αἰθύσσω and its prefixal variants. Being rarely used, verbs of this group gradually lost their connection with the idea of fire-ignition, and modern dictionaries are guided by the meaning that ancient commentators saw in this group of verbs. My interpretation of the semantics of the verb makes it possible to see the image that stands behind the metaphorical description of Castor’s favor to King Arcesilaus: it is likened to kindling a fire in the hearth, and the prefix κατα- indicates that the action is performed from top to bottom, that is, from a height. And in this case, the translation of vv. 10–11 is as follows: “he ignites your blessed hearth with serenity”.

   The article analyzes the Orestes and Electra scene (vv. 211–315) which makes up the first episode of Euripides’ tragedy Orestes. The scene has a three-part composition, the integrity of which is created by the symmetrical arrangement of its parts and the echoing of motifs linked by the theme of φιλία. Special attention in this article is paid to the final fragment of the scene, where there is an exchange between Orestes and Electra (vv. 301–315). In response to the words of Orestes that express his willingness to die if Electra stays with him and dies because of it, Electra replies that she will not leave because she will choose to die with Orestes. The problem raised in the article involves the interpretation of lines 307–315 of the play, which contain Electra’s words (vv. 307–308). It is shown that Euripides neglected logic in order to create a symmetrical composition. The mirror exchange of statements with the topos “life without you is equal to death” helps Euripides to underscore the symmetry of the beginning and the end of the whole scene, which emphasizes the reciprocity of φιλία in the brother-sister relationship.

   The article explores the concept of comic prologue in Ancient Greek comedy, examining its function and significance within the structure of the comedy as a whole. The function of the prologue can be understood by breaking it down into structural elements and analyzing each of them. The article examines the works of scholars Paul Mazon and Octave Navarre who have put forward different perspectives on segmenting the comic prologue. Mazon suggests that the comic prologue can be divided into three parts: a procession or playful “opening scene”, an address to the viewer or recitation, and development of the comic theme in a scene of dramatic action. Navarre focuses on the origin of the comic prologue, its connection with the structure of tragedy, and the comparison of the prologue’s greater length in comedy than in tragedy. The article concludes with a definition of the comic prologue as the first part of a play that contains an exposition, including the representation of main character(s), the problem to be solved, the plan to overcome it, and the first stage of implementation of this plan before the chorus joins in. The function of the prologue is twofold: to engage the audience through jokes and satire, and to provide all necessary information for plot development.

   This article deals with the distribution of dialogue lines between two slaves in the prologue of Aristophanes’ The Knights. There is no agreement among editors which slave utters the quote from Euripides’ Hippolytus (Eur. Hipp. 345) and where this quote should be located. The main question is whether it is necessary to transpose this quote. Many editors have followed Hermann Sauppe in transposing verses 15 and 16 (Meineke, Dindorf, Bergk, van Leeuwen, and Hall–Geldart). In 1835 C. F. Hermann placed the quote from Euripides after verse 18 and added it to the words of the Second Slave (Nikias). Coulon, Sommerstein, Kraus, and Wilson published the text with Hermann’s emendation. The text presented in Wilson’s edition in fact diminishes the comical effect of this dialogue. It seems unlikely that Aristophanes introduces the quote from Euripides into the text with a direct foreshadowing in a previous verse: the Second Slave says he would like to enunciate something Euripides-like and then cites the whole verse from Hippolytus without any modification. When Euripides is quoted, his name is normally omitted (Nub. 1165–1166 / Eur. Hec. 172–174; Nub. 1415 / Eur. Alc. 691). The main argument for conserving the manuscript text is the comical effect, which is connected with the order of verses offered by codex R. The First Slave quotes Euripides, the Second Slave also wants to say something exquisite (like Euripides) but is interrupted by the First Slave.

   The article deals with the problem of interpreting the term κυρία ἔκκκλησία in a passage in Aristophanes’ The Acharnians (v. 19) in comparison with the evidence of the Aristotelian Athenaion politeia (ch. 43) and Athenian epigraphic sources of the classical period. The author presents arguments for the reliability of the ancient tradition reflected in the scholia to The Acharnians (Schol. Acharn. 19). He criticizes the opinion according to which the terminological use of the expression κυρία ἐκκλησία in Athens during Aristophanes’ time cannot be proved. Against it stands the evidence of the Athenian decree IG I3 49 (440–432 BC), where the prytanes are ordered to act at the nearest of the meetings of the Assembly, which are called κύριαι. The meaning of the term in Aristophanes does not coincide with that of the Athenaion politeia: the four meetings system with one “chief ekklesia” described by Aristotle appeared in Athens not earlier than the 340s BC. It was preceded by another model reflected in Schol. Acharn. 19. This conclusion is supported by the testimonies of orators. In particular, Aeschines (2.72; 343 BC), clearly distinguishes between two types of meetings: αἱ τεταγμέναι ἐκ τῶν νόμων and σύγκλητοι, and Demosthenes, in his speech “Against Timocrates” (24.21; 354/353 or 353/352 B. C.), quotes an Athenian law which refers to the three meetings during the prytany. Before the introduction of the new system, the term κυρία ἔκκλησία in Athens served to denote the regular meetings of the Athenian Assembly. It is in this meaning that it is used in The Acharnians.

   According to a number of ancient authors, including the recently discovered treatise by Galen, “On my own opinions,” Prota goras suggested doubting everything that concerns the gods and their essence. Remarkably, Philostratus (Lives of the Sophists 1.10.2) sees the source of this doubt in Protagoras’ “Persian education” because, in his opinion, the Persian magi, while continuing to call on the gods in their secret rituals, would not admit it publicly, fearing that otherwise people, having realized that their supernatural abilities were linked to divine influences, would stop turning to them. In other words, in this way of reasoning, the magi were anxious not to lose their jobs. Should we accept the historicity of this strange message of Philostratus, or should we consider it a typical reflection of the Hellenistic and Roman historiographic stance to see an “eastern trace” in every doctrine or art? A famous statement from the Derveni papyrus (col. XX), which is fundamental to understanding its authorship, may help us answer this question. We will see the reasons why it is impossible to unequivocally answer the question of whether the author of the papyrus was a practicing telestes. However, it becomes clear that he contrasts himself not with the practitioners of the mysteries (including professional mantis), but with those who participate in them without understanding the meaning of what is going on and “without even asking questions.” On the contrary, he intends to provide answers to possible questions and to reveal the true meaning of the authoritative text by exegetical means. We shall also try to answer the question regarding the purpose for which the author of the papyrus sought to utilize various cosmological associations. Whether we are faced with an ancient philologically oriented “commentator,” or whether, by associating Zeus with air, Moira with pneuma, and Demeter and other female deities with the earth, he seeks to uncover the secret intentionally concealed in the poem and understandable only to the initiated?

   The paper deals with passages from Theocritus (7.113–114), Callimachus (H. 4.206–208), Nicander (Ther. 174–176), and Oppian (Hal. 1.620), united by the joint mention of the Nile and the Ethiopians. The appearance of these two details within the same verse/sentence can be interpreted as an allusion to one of the debatable questions of ancient geography — the location of the sources of the Nile. It is likely that here we are dealing with a special type of allusion: each of the poets in question refers not to a specific place or text, but to a scientific problem, awareness of which he wants to demonstrate. The author concludes that such geographical allusions can be regarded as an implicit commentary and are similar to the poetic technique of so-called interpretatio Homerica (the use of a Homeric hapax, in which the context itself contains the author’s opinion on the correct interpretation of a particular rare word). In connection with the passages from Theocritus and Oppian, the problem of “double” Ethiopians — western and eastern — is also relevant. The article pays attention to the origins of this (Hom. Od. 1.23–24) and also considers interpretations of this Homeric place in Herodotus’ Histories, Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound and Pliny’s Natural History.

   In the Gymnasticus, ascribed to Flavius Philostratus, there are five anecdotes about trainers who helped their athletes by various means to win at Olympia (Gymn. 20–24). None of these stories, except the one about the renowned boxer Glaucus of Carystus, is attested elsewhere. Glaucus’ trainer Tisias encouraged him by shouting τὰν ἀπ’ ἀρότρου πλῆξαι which meant ‘right-handed punch’ because his right hand was so strong that he once straightened a ploughshare with it. Pausanias, however, attributes the exhortation (ὦ παῖ τὴν ἀπ’ ἀρότρου) to Glaucus’ father Demylus and renders the story differently: Demylus takes his young son to Olympia after having watched him attach a ploughshare to a plough with his bare hands. The author of the present article proposes how to interpret this exhortation. The problem of interpretation has been solved differently as we may see in the translations of Pausanias’ work into Latin and modern languages; it has also resulted in a variant reading ἐπ(ί) instead of ἀπ(ό) in the Suda lexicon, where the Pausanias text is cited with minor changes. Since Philostratus’ aim was to praise the wisdom of trainers, it is not improbable that he slightly changed the story and that the Pausanias version is the original one. In this case, the two parts of the anecdote are logically connected and the ellipsis might be filled with the word “ploughshare” (ὕνιν) which is present in both variants of the anecdote.

   The article discusses the strange presentation at the beginning of Philo of Alexandria’s On Abraham of the main content of the Book of Genesis as an account “of fruitfulness and barrenness, of dearth and plenty; how fire and water wrought great destruction of what is on earth; how on the other hand plants and animals were born and throve through the kindly tempering of the air and the yearly seasons.” The Book of Genesis is not a natural science treatise or a history of meteorological and climatic phenomena. Why then does Philo give it such a strange characterization? Philo’s words are correlated with topoi common in the philosophical literature of his time, and the following explanation is offered. Philo relates his main idea, the idea of the correspondence of human law to natural law, in both of which the virtues of humanity and justice are equally manifested, to the plan of the Book of Genesis. He wants to present it as an account first of the law of the world, then of human laws. The laws of nature are to be presented in the account of the creation of the world. But the actual content of the beginning of the Book of Genesis differs from what Philo expects from it; the reasoning he needs about humanity and justice present in God’s created world is not there. Philo finds it not in the creation of the world, but in its existence, not in the opening chapters, but in the continuation of the Book of Genesis. However, here, in this part of Genesis, the natural world has no independent significance; this part is already devoted to human life. Thus, it turns out that topics that have only indirect significance in the Book of Genesis itself, unexpectedly become for Philo important themes of the Pentateuch in their own right.

   The present study attempts to show what influence a commentary can have on the formation of ideas about a preceding philosophical tradition. A case in point is Simplicius’ commentary on Aristotle’s “Physics” and on fragments of Empedocles’ poem. The selected passage, though small in size, is quite remarkable in terms of content and the way Simplicius deals with it. With regard to content, we are dealing here with one of the fundamental problematic plots of Empedocles’ philosophy about the alternate rule of Love and Strife. But Simplicius adds to this his own view of Empedocles’ philosophy, dictated by his desire to harmonize the views of all the pagan philosophers and place them within a single consistent scheme. Simplicius wanted to counterpose something to Christianity, which was gaining in strength, and to show that all Greek philosophy developed along a certain path and contains no internal disagreements. On the one hand, Simplicius has preserved for us very valuable material — fairly lengthy sections of the text of Empedocles’ poem. On the other hand, wishing to implement his program, Simplicius chose those fragments of the poem that fit well into it. Therefore, the question arises whether we should take into account the context in which the fragments are quoted, or simply extract from the general body of the commentary those fragments of Empedocles’ poem that we need and consider them independently?

   Discussing how the reproaches of a guilty conscience haunt a man who has not lost the understanding of true virtue despite having fallen from its path, Persius (3.39–43) alludes to two well-known examples associated with Phalaris and Dionysius/Damocles: if Jupiter wanted to punish cruel tyrants with mental anguish, the sufferings of (a) one who is roasted in a copper bull, or (b) one over whose head a sword hangs, would seem trifling to them. The traditional explanation of these lines suggests several strong logical ‘leaps’, rightly recognized (but justified with some difficulty) by N. Rudd and R. A. Harvey. The remorse of tyrants is compared to the physical suffering of their victims, not their own; at the same time, for the sake of the balance between the two exempla, the story of Damocles is forcibly interpreted as an elaborate torture inflicted on him by Dionysius, moving away from the interpretation that Cicero and Horace give to the episode with the sword (Dionysius demonstrates to his subject what life is like for a despot who constantly fears an assassination attempt). Meanwhile, it seems possible to restore coherence to Persius’ thought by suggesting that v. 39 refers to a version of the Phalaris legend according to which the rebellious citizens of Agrigentum burned the tyrant in the same copper bull in which he burned others (cf. first of all Ovid Ibis 439–440, a passage close to Persius also lexically). In this interpretation, the punishment for tyrants’ crimes is either talionic revenge (Phalaris) or the constant fear of retribution which poisons their life (for it is Dionysius, not Damocles, who is the protagonist of vv. 40–41); but the virtual torment of remorse can be more painful than both.

   For a long time Britain remained one of the uncharted lands of the ancient world. Its remote location largely determined the history of the development of the region itself as well as the attitudes toward it in the classical literary tradition. The lack of established contacts led to a situation when almost nothing was known about it until Caesar’s campaigns in the 1^st century BC. However, even after that descriptions of the new province largely corresponded to ancient stereotypes about everything new and unknown.

   One of the main goals of this paper is to examine and analyze how the perception of the island as the edge of the world was formed, in what situations this image was used, and how it was supposed to influence readers’ attitude towards these territories.

   It is also an attempt to trace how this perception changed with the development of the quantity and quality of contacts between the island and the mainland, as well as with the expansion of the borders of the empire as a whole. Particular attention is paid to how this image relates to the unknown, and how it transforms or changes its boundaries along with changes in the immediate boundaries of the state.

   This paper deals with the problem of political interpretation of the works of Dracontius, a Roman poet of the late 5^th century from Carthage. The thesis about the socio-political background of his poems has become increasingly widespread in recent years. The grounds for this are provided by numerous references in his works to contemporary events: the formation of the Vandal kingdom in North Africa, formerly Roman, and the parallel conflict between the old and the new elites. Nevertheless, the author’s view of this conflict and his assessment of its sides remain a matter of debate. The key to solving it largely lies in a proper understanding of the author’s sympathies and antipathies towards his own characters, borrowed from traditional ancient mythological plots, whose behaviour appears to be a projection onto contemporary events. One such character is Hercules. He appears in two poems at once, Romulea 2 and 4. His image in them breaks many stereotypical ideas about the brutal and tragic nature of this hero; the present article is an attempt to provide an explanation for this. I aim to prove that Hercules is represented as an ambivalent model: on the one hand, he is the embodiment of the Roman side in the Roman-Vandal confrontation for a Roman audience, and on the other hand, he is the model of correct behaviour in conflict in principle. In the latter sense the didactic pathos associated with him could also be addressed to Vandals.

   1. А Greek inscription found in Armavir (Armenia) written probably in the 2^nd c. BC in a script close to papyrus cursive, contains a fragment from a tragedy similar in style to Euripides. 2. Plutarch writes that the Armenian king Artavazd (Artavasdes) II (55–34 BC) wrote tragedies. He also tells that after the battle of Carrhae in 53 BC Crassus was beheaded and his head was taken to Armenia and cast into the hall, as the head of Pentheus, where, at the court of Artavazd, a tragic actor was singing a part of the Bacchae of Euripides. 3. The plot of Euripides’ lost tragedy The Daughters of Pelias is the subject matter of one of the “refutation” exercises (ἀνασκευή) in the old Armenian rhetorical handbook Book of Chreia — in part a translation from the second half of the 5^th c., based օn the Progymnasmata of Aphthonius of Antioch (late 4^th c.). 4. The Art of Grammar by Dionysius Thrax was translated into Armenian in the 2^nd half of the 5^th c. Between the 6^th and 17^th centuries, about a dozen of Armenian commentaries on this work were written. The commentators mention the connection of tragedy with Dionysus, the inventor of wine, the iambic meter characteristic of tragedy, and that the word itself means “goat-song”. 5. While there was a noticeable interest in Greek theatre during the Hellenistic period of pre-Christian Armenia, there are few medieval testimonies regarding this matter in medieval times. The learned author Grigor Magistros (11^th c.) is an exception: he mentions Euripides several times.

   The paper analyses the use of the paroemia at mæla fagrt ok hyggja flátt (to speak fairly and to think falsely) in the Old Norse-Icelandic literary corpus, focusing both on the paroemia and its derivative — the representation of the characters’ eloquence by the formula that they are speaking in “fair words” (mæla með fögrum orðum). At the heart of the research lies the obscure use of the paroemia in one of the sagas of Icelanders, Bjarnar saga hítdælakappa, where the paroemia’s function is difficult to interpret if it is read only against the general context of the saga. While often in the Old Norse-Icelandic corpus the paroemia is followed by deceit and the immediate death of the character who has been spoken to fairly, in Bjarnar saga the paroemia leads only to an unsuccessfull winter stay at the main antagonist’s farmhouse. Our commentary to this part draws upon the analysis of the use of the paroemia and its variants in the wider corpus of Old Norse-Icelandic texts. This approach allows one not only to look at the case of non-standard paroemical usage in sagas and discover several narrative strategies connected to this particular paroemia in the Old Norse-Icelandic literature but also to start a discussion about the attitude towards eloquence in Medieval Iceland.

   Our article is devoted to a detailed historical, linguistic, and cultural commentary and a new Russian translation of the song “Ego sum abbas Cucaniensis” from Carmina Burana, a Latin-German manuscript written in the first quarter of the 13^th century. Our research presents an analysis of the topoi and allusions to sacred texts found in this drinking song; it also explores the context of its creation. This song provides the first mention of the fabulous and paradisiacal land of Cockaigne, an imaginary place of extreme luxury and ease where physical comforts and pleasures are always immediately at hand. In the song the abbot wins a gambling game, and the loser exclaims wafna. The word wafna is a hapax, probably of a German origin, and, according to different scholars and medievalists, it may have different meanings. Due to this mysterious exclamation, “Ego sum abbas Cucaniensis” is frequently reflected in English literature: in the 20^th and 21^st centuries different authors belonging to “popular” and “high” culture have used this word in their texts. However, in their works the word wafna did not fully correlate with its original meaning, but instead, due to its unique use in the above context, became a kind of marker of “goliardic” themes (primarily in connection with gambling and alcohol). There are several reasons for this. To begin with, the song’s popularity in the English-speaking environment (while apparently not being widely disseminated in the Middle Ages) is explained by the fact that it was among the first translations of poems from Carmina Burana into English by J. A. Symonds in 1884; later, in 1935–1936, it was included in Carl Orff’s cantata by the same name, texts from which were subsequently often read in schools and universities in Latin classes. Moreover, Symonds leaves the word wafna untranslated, which encourages readers to seek their own interpretations and create their own associations, just as English-language writers of subsequent eras continue to do.

   This article traces two types of commentaries on the myth of Narcissus (Ovid, The Metamorphoses, III), which existed in the Middle Ages in French literature in the vernacular — the courtly and the moral and allegorical. The first type of commentary is represented by individual works in which this myth is mentioned (“The Lay of Narcissus”, “The Romance of the Rose”, “The Book of Love Chess” by Evrart de Conty). In these, Ovid’s personage is treated as a violator of Amor’s laws; consequently, he takes on the traits of the “Belle Dame sans merci”. Commentaries of the second kind, such as the poetic and prose versions of “Moralized Ovid” (Ovide moralisé), interpret the figure of Narcissus as the embodiment of the Christian sin of pride, and of Echo as the good name disregarded by the proud man. This second type of commentary fragments the text of the “Metamorphoses” into separate stories and personages, each with its own allegorical meaning. The figure of Narcissus and the story of his death becomes a didactic exemplum that can be used in a sermon. In addition, by the early 15^th century, such commentaries had been adopted into treatises on poetry (seconde rhétorique) and poetics (poetria, poetic fiction). In them, Narcissus becomes a rhetorical figure destined to create poetic works of high style. The logical conclusion of this process of fragmentation, which is also embodied in the miniatures of illuminated manuscripts, is the appearance in the 16^th century of a new form which Ovid’s poem takes, the form of a collection of emblems.

   The legend of the Tatar Khan and the daughter of the Armenian king, who gave birth to a monster which, as a result of baptism, turned into a beautiful baby, an event that prompted the khan to accept Christianity along with his people, was included in the narratives of many European chroniclers and historians. This legend formed the basis of the well-known English chivalric novel “King of Tars” that was compiled around 1330. The plot of the legend is mainly composed of the same elements. However, in some chronicles and annals, as well as in the mentioned novel, their ratio and combination changes, and sometimes one of the storylines falls out, or one character is replaced by another. Often there are some increments to the plot, such as: the capture of Jerusalem by the Tatar Khan, the expulsion of the Saracens from Jerusalem, the seizure of Aleppo, Damascus and other cities by the united troops of the Tatars, the kings of Armenia and Georgia. As for the Armenian trace of this legend in the European historical and literary tradition, clear parallels can be found between the plots of the first branch of “David of Sassoun” and the legends circulating in the West regarding the story of the daughter of the Armenian king, who got married to a non-Christian. This article reveals these parallels, as well as the traces that are similar in Old Russian tales.

   The present article is devoted to the problem of commenting on medieval chronicles (on the example of the Old Spanish Estoria de España by Alfonso X the Wise, 13^th с.) and the need not only to search for the sources of certain large and small stories, but also to explain the choice of words, naming, and the mechanism of putting together various stories from the point of view of the problem of truth/fiction (verdad / fabula) in the perception of the medieval chronicler, for whom an important goal is to present his story as truth and to make it compelling for the listener and reader. As an example, we examine the well-known chronicle story about the genealogy of the Huns (Jordan, St. Jerome, Sigebert of Gembloux), refined and edited by the editors of the Spanish chronicle, as well as two etiological legends about the origin of significant toponyms and the founding of the most important cities of Spain (the legend of the marriage of Liberia, daughter of Span; the legend of King Rocas). The studied stories have shown that the task of creating a reliable story is achieved either by deliberately creating a new, unknown narrative (the stories of Liberia and Rocas) without a clearly identifiable source, or by consciously clarifying and changing traditional information (satyrs as progenitors of the Huns).

   Similarities between Sophocles’ Oedipus and Shakespeare’s Lear were first noticed decades ago. Scholars called attention to the episodes in which both kings repel truthtellers (e. g., Tiresias and Kent); Oedipus’ two sons and Lear’s two daughters are killed; Oedipus laments over his wife and mother, the dead Jocasta, and Lear weeps over his daughter, the dead Cordelia; Creon enters with Antigone’s corpse and Lear with Cordelia’s corpse; the blind Oedipus is led by Antigone and the blind Gloucester by Edgar; etc. A few years ago (2019) an entire collection of articles was published on the parallels between Oedipus at Colonus and King Lear. Although in this collection the similarities between the two plays are analyzed from different points of view, no special attention has been paid to the metaphorical meaning of blindness of mind and eyes, an aspect about which the author of this article first wrote in 2015 and discusses it in more detail in this paper. “It is better to be blind in the eye than blind in the mind”: this saying of the 5th century Armenian historiographer Yeghishē, found in other ancient sources as well, perfectly fits the dramatic story of Oedipus, who in his turn has well-known counterparts in Shakespeare’s King Lear, namely Lear and Gloucester. This paper focuses on an interesting parallel between these three characters, namely, the painful, tragic way by which they acquire wisdom (in the case of Oedipus, prophetic wisdom) through blindness.

   This article deals with an unknown copy of a course on logic and metaphysics by an outstanding figure of the Greek Enlightenment, the writer and teacher Athanasios Psalidas. In this course, compiled in 1804 in Ioannina and preserved in an autograph and several later undated copies, Psalidas outlines the philosophical views of the German encyclopedic scholar Christian von Wolf, which he learned during his studies at the University of Vienna in 1787–1795. The earliest precisely dated copy of Psalidas’ work is preserved in the Russian State Library, F. 310 (collection of V. M. Undolsky), No. 1360. In our article, brief codicological information on the manuscript is provided as well as information on its composition and content. The manuscript contains a treatise on logic and the first three parts of metaphysics, namely ontology, cosmology, and psychology (without an ending). The end of the treatise on psychology and the final part of metaphysics — natural theology — are missing, although there is no lacuna or break in the text at the end. In the article, information is provided concerning the scribe and owner of the manuscript, Theodosios Melas, a representative of the rich and educated merchant family Melas from Ioannina, who lived in Russia for a period of time. Based on the study of the watermarks (Venetian-made paper), we conclude that the manuscript was written by Theodosios Melas before he moved to Russia, most likely in Ioannina. It is established that in 1816–1819 Melas lived in Moscow, where he acquired a certain number of educational publications in Greek. Information is provided about these publications, as well as about a second manuscript belonging to Theodosios Melas, acquired by V. M. Undolskii in 1863 and also preserved in the Russian State Library. The text of the newly discovered copy of Psalidas’ works is compared with Latin translations of treatises on logic and metaphysics by Christian von Wolf, as well as with their popular educational transcriptions compiled by Johann Heinrich Winkler and Friedrich Christian Baumeister. It is established that the direct source of the works of Athanasios Psalidas were textbooks on logic and metaphysics by Friedrich Christian Baumeister, frequently reprinted in the 18^th century.

   The paper deals with K. Ullmann’s interpretation of St Gregory the Theologian’s (c. 330–390) conception of priesthood, presented in his monograph (1825). A fragment of this work underwent significant transformation when translated into Russian (1869). The article seeks to establish what meanings were conveyed unaltered, and what was considerably changed during the process of communication between the Greek and the German authors, and from the latter to the Russian translator. A comparison of these three texts is made using the methodology of Quentin Skinner. After examining the categorical apparatus of the 4^th and 19^th century texts with regard to their content, their outward connection (quotations and common themes) proves to be illusory, so that we can say that the hermeneutic of those who studied St Gregory’s texts was not entirely correct. With regard to the illocutionary act (i. e., the intention of the authors in a communicative situation) of these texts, we see an astonishing unanimity: they all aim not to inform the reader of the standards of priestly ministry, but to change the inner attitude of the reader towards it. Paradoxically, rather than interpret St Gregory the Theologian’s texts, 19^th century authors reproduce his intention, which turned out to be important even for the functionalizing thought of modernity.

   A review of: Baryshnikov, A. (2023). Rimskaia Britaniia : 12 lektsii dlia proekta Magisteriia [Roman Britain : 12 lectures for the Magisteria project]. Rosebud Publishing. 516 p. (In Russian).