Loomis Chaffee Classics Journal

The Role of Refutation in Socratic Dialogues

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 02:50:42 -0700

Being refuted is an embarrassing experience for many, but it is a critical part of philosophical investigation in Plato’s Socratic dialogues. The refutations from Socrates often come in the form of questions or requests for explanations. As the interlocutor answers these inquiries, he finds himself in a contradiction. In the Euthyphro, for example, Socrates asks the titular character to define piety, since Euthyphro himself dares to prosecute his father for murder. When Euthyphro states that what is dear to the gods is pious, Socrates asks if Euthyphro believes the gods are in disagreement. As Euthyphro subsequently affirms that gods take different stances towards the same action, he reaches the contradictory conclusion that an action can be pious and impious simultaneously.[1] He thus has to reject his initial definition and present a new proposition. This method of refutation can be applied to a single thinker with a slight modification. One can raise a hypothesis and doubt it afterward, assuming the roles of both the interlocutor and Socrates.

The benefit of Socrates’s refutation is not obvious, as he usually disproves all the answers an interlocutor provides. At the end of the Euthyphro, Socrates deems none of the definitions satisfactory, acknowledging that he and Euthyphro “must investigate again from the beginning what piety is.”[2] Frustrated, the reader and the interlocutor might see Socrates’s refutation as a signal to give up the difficult inquiry. Contrary to the dismissive reading of the Socratic method, this paper argues that, rather than killing the discussion, refutations in the Socratic dialogues not only elicit affirmative responses but also effectively advance the discussion by facilitating the construction of hypotheses and the exploration of new areas of...Read More

Fluvius Iris: A Creative Translation of Vashti Bunyan’s “Rainbow River”

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 02:34:41 -0700

Singer-songwriter music of the 1960s and 70s often focused on themes of authenticity, love, and nature, expressed through personal lyrics with folk-influenced accompaniment. Noticing the importance of similar themes to classical poetry (and the roots of the modern guitar in the ancient Greek cithara!), I decided to translate a singer-songwriter piece into Latin. The following is a loose English-Latin translation of “Rainbow River,” a song by British singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan written in the late 60s during her horse-and-cart journey from London to the Hebrides.

Original Lyrics

The rainbow river is a laughing stream
down in a valley by a mountain that is pinetree tall
the rainbow river has a small boy fishing
with a worm and a jam jar by the waterfall
don't make a sound, don't disturb the ground
the biggest fish you ever saw is around
and the rainbow river gives a rainbow fish
as one small boy goes running proudly to his mother’s call

The stone-built farmhouse is a rough stone cottage
hiding close against the hillside, up a winding track
the stone-built farmhouse has a fair-hairedfarmer
wearing wooden shoes and building up a new haystack
run in the door, stand on the stone floor
the oven opens, there's the biggest loaf you ever saw
and the stone-built farmhouse gives a good, warm welcome
as he sits down in his armchair with a Windsor back

The magpie meadow is a glowing evening colour
sun is setting quietly and the boy is tired
the magpie meadow has a sparrow hawk
who hovers hanging on the wind, preying eagle-eyed
sit by the lantern, watch as the years turn
slowly bringing truth for every child to learn
and the magpie meadow darkens gently blue now
as the family sit, their faces lit by...Read More

A Translation of Catullus 101

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 02:23:40 -0700

Gaius Valerius Catullus (84-54BCE) is a Roman poet famed for his poetic interpretations of love and hatred. While he wrote more than 100 poems throughout his life, one of his most influential works remains Catullus 101. In this elegiac poem, Catullus mournfully addresses his dead brother. Despite the poem’s brevity, he utilizes many complex language constructions to amplify his voice and fully convey the themes of grief and frustration.

Original Latin

Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus
advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,
ut te postremo donarem munere mortis
et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem,
quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum,
heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi.
nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum
tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

Translation

Carried through many nations and many seas
I come to these wretched—brother—to the wretched sacrifices in honor of the dead
So that I might bestow to you the last service of death
And speak in vain to silent ashes,
Seeing that fortune stole you yourself from me,
Oh, my poor brother undeservedly taken away from me.
Now however meanwhile these things, which in the ancient custom...Read More

Modern and Classical Languages Honor Tea Speech

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 02:15:33 -0700

When I visited my relatives back home during Christmas break, my uncle asked me what I would study in college. I said nonchalantly, “Classics … so Latin and ancient Greek.” He was silent for a moment, but then he asked me this question:

“Why do you need to study dead languages to study classics?”

Notably, my uncle was not challenging the value of learning about classical antiquity, but the necessity of reading original Latin and Greek rather than translations. What is so compelling about the ancient languages themselves? This is the question I want to discuss today.

My first moment of epiphany came when reading Lucretius, an Epicurean poet. When introducing the central project of his work, he wrote, “nam tibi de summa Caeli ratione deumque / disserere incipiam et rerum primordia pandam,” which is translated as, “For I will begin to expound to you about the greatest nature of the sky and of the gods, and I will unfold the origins of things.” The translation tells us what the lines are saying. However, when I was working through the second line in Latin, I paid attention to the two consecutive elisions, that is, the omission of syllables to create a blending, elongated sound effect. While I found the first part of the line difficult to read aloud because of the elisions, I regained a limpid, fluid rhythm, a sense of stability, in the second half. The metrical pattern of the line, then, mimics the very idea Lucretius wanted to express—the power of philosophy to untangle and clarify confounding concepts. I would not have found the beauty of his poetry if I had resorted to reading the translation.

I found a similar nuance when reading Homer’s Iliad. When Priam, the great Trojan king, addressed Achilles, who killed and mutilated his...Read More

Untitled

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 02:07:10 -0700

There are many versions of Medusa’s story. Hesiod’s Theogony, a 1022-line poem describing the origins and genealogies of the ancient Greek gods, presents Medusa and her immortal sisters, Stheno and Euryale, as daughters of the primordial sea-god Phorcys and the sea-monster Ceto. Medusa is a Gorgon, a word associated with the Greek adjective gorgós, of which one definition is “grim, fierce, terrible” in appearance.[1] Quite fittingly, Medusa is a dreadful monster with terrifying eyes and is described as having snake hair and petrifying eyes in Pindar and Apollodorus. In most versions of the story, King Polydectes of Seriphus sends the hero Perseus to behead Medusa. Perseus succeeds, though with divine assistance. Since Medusa is pregnant by Poseidon, Pegasus (a winged horse) and Chrysaor (a figure depicted as a warrior) spring from her body at the time of her decapitation.

There is, however, a second retelling of the same story. Ovid’s Metamorphoses paints Medusa as a tragic figure cursed into her monstrosity. She is born a beautiful maiden with long golden hair especially admired by others. A priestess of Athena, she is raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple. Outraged by the desecration of her holy space, Athena punishes Medusa—emphatically the victim of the story—by turning her hair into snakes and her eyes into ones that can turn others to stone.

Medusa’s death is well-acknowledged across ancient sources, but the nature of her monstrosity differs in the Ovidian tradition when compared with Hesiod and Apollodorus’s narratives. Ultimately, is Medusa an inherent monster or a tragic victim?

The poem below assumes Ovid’s version.

I have lived a thousand lives after death.

In bronze shields lifted high by men
who wore my severed...Read More

A Crash Course in Backstabbing 101: The Julius Caesar Edition

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 01:26:57 -0700

The Senate Chamber was thick with tension.

On the fateful Ides of March, 44 BC, Julius Caesar entered the Curia of Pompey as Rome’s most formidable leader, utterly ignorant of the conspiracy brewing within the Senate and tragically blind to the betrayal that would come in the form of 23 stabs from the very men he trusted most. He never walked out again. What happened? Why was this the fate that awaited him? What drove Rome’s most powerful hero to become its most famous victim?

Well, get ready for a dramatic tale filled with fiery ambition, twisted betrayals, and one man’s
final, grand downfall—and the great Republic that fell with him.

After climbing up the political ladder from quaestor to consul, a height his father never reached, Gaius Julius Caesar cemented his place in history. He expanded Rome’s territories across Europe by leading the Gallic Wars, a grueling eight-year campaign to pacify and conquer modern France, Belgium, and Switzerland; he settled an infamous alliance with Cleopatra, the Pharaoh of Egypt; and, following his victory over Pompey the Great, was declared Rome’s first dictator perpetuo—dictator for life. Caesar was, without a doubt, the Roman Republic’s knight in shining armor, the man who swept the damsel-in-distress, which was Rome’s chaotic government, off its feet and saved it from the century-long turmoil of civil wars and factionalism that endlessly raged from 135 to 30 BC. He further won immense respect and popularity, particularly from the middle and lower classes, through a series of reforms, such as land redistribution programs for veterans and the poor, the extension of Roman citizenship to many provincials, and the promotion of debt relief.

Yet, great power is never without its opposition and...Read More

Live and Love: Translating Catullus 5

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 01:07:02 -0700

Original Latin

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis.
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum,
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus invidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

Literal Translation

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love,
And let us value all the gossips of the rather strict old men,
As of one copper coin.
Suns are able to go down and comeback:
When the brief light once dies,
One eternal night must be slept through by us.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
Then another thousand, then a second hundred,
Then continuously another thousand, then a hundred.
Then, when we have had manythousands,
We will mix them up, in order that we may not know,
Or in order that anyone evil may not be able to be envious,
Since he knows that there is so much of kisses.

Translation with Rhyme

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love—
All the gossip of those strict old men conjoined,
Is of no more value to us than a single copper coin.
The suns can forever set and drop,
Then return to rise above, nonstop
Yet for us, once sets our brief light,
We must sleep through one eternal night.
So, give me a thousand kisses, and a hundred hence.
And another thousand, and a second hundred then.
And yet another thousand, and another hundred...Read More

Expecting the Possible: How the Brain Simulates Normality

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:54:29 -0700

“This is an external world, sense perception is reliable, I am not a brain in a vat, my faculty of reasoning is reliable [...], memory is reliable.”[1]

What does it mean to be “normal”? When we say that a behavior is typical, or a mind is well-functioning, are we really describing a standard that expects the absolutes, or a pattern that carries some fluidity? It appears, rather interestingly, that our inner narratives and sense of coherence emerge from somewhere between what is and what could or might be. This concept troubles our notion that perception is simply a passive reception of the world. In reality, both ancient philosophy and modern neuroscience seem to point us toward a different possibility altogether: that our mind is always doing more than receiving.

Plato’s allegory of the cave alludes to the modern idea of an actively adapting mind, as sensual perceptions do not convey stable truths but information that can confuse the mind. In the allegory, prisoners are chained in a cave since childhood, with their necks and legs fettered. Light is provided by a fire burning far above and behind them. Between the prisoners and the fire is a low wall, along which people walk by and carry artifacts above it. As the prisoners cannot turn their heads, they can only see what is in front of them: shadows of the artifacts cast by the firelight.[2] Having become accustomed to seeing shadows, the prisoners conform to what they see and organize their observations into a coherent pattern of anticipation. They interpret the shadows through an internal model shaped by habit and prior...Read More

What Do Words Mean?

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 21:32:32 -0700

I originally became interested in the question “what do words mean?” when I read a book a few years ago on semantics: a modern, interdisciplinary field studying meaning in language. Last year, the Classics Club also held discussions on Socratic definitional dialogues, which challenged and expanded my previous understanding of word meanings, inspiring me to dig deeper. This essay recounts these experiences and changes in my thinking, and attempts to synthesize modern semantics’ answer to “what do words mean?” with classical philosophy’s answer.

Thoughts on Meaning: A Slim Guide to Semantics and Modern Semantics

A couple of years ago, I read the book Meaning: A Slim Guide to Semantics by Paul Elbourne after my sister gave it to me for Christmas because of my interest in linguistics.[1] She was taking linguistics classes at the time, and semantics was her favorite subfield. I wasn’t sure what to expect: I had a little prior knowledge of linguistics, but none of semantics specifically. Semantics (specifically, natural language semantics) is a subfield of both linguistics and philosophy. In this essay, I will focus on natural language semantics as applied to individual words.

The first chapter of Meaning discusses definitions and the difficulty of arriving at satisfactory ones. The book uses the word “chair” as an example. We might define a chair as an item of furniture, but that would be too lax—it would include things that are not chairs. Similarly, we could construct an overly strict definition that excludes things that are chairs. A definition could even be overly lax and strict at the same time. For example, if...Read More

On Happiness as the Highest Good in the Nicomachean Ethics

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 21:18:32 -0700

Editor’s Note: Fanou wrote this paper for his PHILOS 25A: Ancient Philosophy course at UC Berkeley and kindly agreed to share his work with us in this volume. No changes, besides reformatting, were made to the work.

In Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle examines the question of what the human good is and ultimately identifies happiness as this good. In this paper, I will analyze how Aristotle characterizes the human good in the Nicomachean Ethics I.1-2 and examine his argument in chapter I.7 that happiness is this highest human good. I will then raise an objection to Aristotle’s argument for happiness as the human good and consider how Aristotle might defend his argument.

First, I will examine how Aristotle characterizes the human good. Aristotle begins with what appears to be a straightforward empirical observation—that every human activity aims at some perceived good or end (1094a). Aristotle then makes a crucial distinction between two types of ends: cases where the end is the activity itself, and cases where the end is some product distinct from the activity. For instance, in playing music, the end (good music) is inherent in the activity itself, while in building a house, the end (the completed house) is separate from the act of construction. Where the end is distinct from the activity, Aristotle considers this end to be “by nature better than the activity” (1094a5). This reveals an important principle in Aristotle’s thinking—that which something aims at or exists for the sake of is superior to that which does the aiming or exists for its sake. The house is more valuable than the mere act of building because the building process exists precisely to bring about the house.

This principle...Read More