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HUMANITIES 85 which assumes significant differences between women and men and claims that one sex is superior to the other; and sex complementarity, which claims that women and men are significantly different and equal. Allen considers what philosophers have to say about the role of women and men in generating children, whether wisdom and virtue are the same or different for women and men, and what masculinity and femininity have to do with personal identity. She classifies each philosopher in each of these categories as a proponent of one of the three theories. In such a broad survey, one could find fault with the interpretation of some evidence, especiallyin the case of the pre-Socratics whose works are preserved in quotations by later commentators. Some writings, like those attributed to female Pythagoreans, receive an inordinate amount of attention, considering that some authorities consider them to have been written by men. There are inaccuracies (like the date for Sappho, which is given as fourth century BC, p 15) and - what is particularly disconcerting the spellingof propernames (Kallikroaitos, p 142, appears as Kallidraditas, p 147, lschomachus appears as lsomachus, pp 54ff). These misspellings make it difficult to cross-check references. The analysis and argument are sometimes slowand the points repeated and summarized at several places in each chapter. This makes the book more suitable for reference than for reading through. Allen's conclusion is that the diversity of views held by philosophers aboutwomen and men is replaced in the thirteenth century by the view of Aristotle, who became the authority for the University of Paris and other universities. Aristotle had argued for sex polarity, with women passive and men active, women infertile and imperfect in comparison with men, women capable atbest of true opinion while men could attain knowledge, and women's virtue being obedience while men's was ruling. One result of the adoption of Aristotle as the authority, Allen argues, was that women were excluded from universities, although in the previous centuries they had been both pupils and teachers. This was an important change and it had the effect of ensuring that women became inferior to men as far as education could accomplish that. Allen has produced a useful study which anyone interested in the relationships of women and men will want to consult. Readers would do well to confirm the information they find and not rely solely on this book. (M.E. IRWIN) Erika Rummel. Erasmus as a Translator of the Classics University of Toronto Press, Erasmus Studies 7. ix, 182. $3°,00 Nihil ... difficilius quam ex bene Graecis bene Latina reddere: let Erasmus's own comment serve both to mark his professionalism as a translator and to remind us that for him translation was not from Latin or Greek into the vernacular but from Greek into Latin, the language which he had learnt to write as a child and in which he possessed an almost dangerous fluency. Respect for Erasmus's study ofGreek as a means to scientific restoration of the authentic New Testament should not blind us to his humanistic ancestry. The man who at thirty could devote himself to revising a select edition of his letters was a self-conscious stylist whose Latin versions (usually of brief essays that could be completed in a few days) were composed in the same spirit of intellectual display as his lesser 'epideictic works' like the Panegyricus or the reply to Lucian's Tyrannicida, product of a friendly competition with More. An observant critic of the hazards of capia in others (witness his letter to Jacob Anthoniszoon, Ep 173, 75-85, eWE II, pp 162-3), Erasmus could violate his express principles of translation - as Erika Rummel shows - so as not to lose an eloquent tum of phrase, and found nothing harder than to suppress alternative versions whether ofAdages or argumentation. Thus the faithful Hecuba translation was followed immediately by the prolix Iphigenia, half as long again as its Greek original, and Erasmus even contemplated altering not just the metre but the style and content of Euripidean choruses by 'treating of some commonplace Or deviating into some agreeable digression' (Ep 208, CWE II, P 135). No one isbetter qualified than...

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