We wish to alert readers to two matters regarding our article "Speaking Different Languages or Reading From the Same Script? Word Usage of Democratic and Republican Politicians." First, due to a clerical error, the results reported in that piece were based on only four of the six speech sources described (those from the debates and from Fox News Sunday were inadvertently omitted). Second, our practice was to take the usage frequency of certain categories of words relative to all words contained in the larger dictionary. For example, we computed the percentage of "security" words relative to all words in the "Basic Personal Values" dictionary. An alternative approach would have been to compute security words as a percentage of all words spoken. Though quite different, both approaches provide useful information for three of the four dictionaries we employed. John Jost and Joanna Sterling of New York University (NYU) accurately pointed out to us, however, that for the "Motivated Social Cognition" (MSC) dictionary the only sensible denominator is total words, not words in the MSC dictionary. Consequently, we now present the full (six-source) results for all dictionaries using both the original and the alternative denominator. Though several of the individual relationships change when the full data are employed, the core conclusion of the original piece-that differences in word usage by Democrats and Republicans are surprisingly weak and occasionally in the unexpected direction-appears to stand. Specifically, in the Strict-Nurturant Parent dimension, the "Rules and Reinforcement" and "Nurturant-Caregiving" categories demonstrate the same relationship as in the original presentation of results, "Self-discipline" gains significance in the expected direction, and "Empathy-Openness" gains significance but in the opposite direction from what was hypothesized.
This article begins with a review of the traditional dates for Palladas (c. A.D. 360–450) and the current consensus of most scholars (c. A.D. 319–400). The first of these relies almost exclusively on the dubious manuscript lemmata and the second on an interpretation of Palladas' epigrams pertaining to the rise of Christianity and the weakening of the pagan cults, which are supposed to be Theodosian in date. Both timelines are difficult to reconcile with two external clues, which together suggest that his floruit must have been earlier than the second half of the fourth century. Further analysis reveals that the important pagan-Christian epigrams are full of Constantine's political and religious propaganda post-324. Another line of inquiry establishes a new set of dates: c. A.D. 259–340.
Sources contemporary with Melania the Elder contain several clues for reconstructing a timeline of her life. Out of a morass of confusion in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholarship, Eduard Schwartz and F.X. Murphy finally set this timeline on a solid foundation. The consensus forged by these two scholars, however, has been a tenuous one and has come under periodic attack. The following article answers the objections of the critics and, through an examination of one universally misunderstood passage in Palladius’ Lausiac History, finally puts the timeline beyond dispute. This chronological study also generates new insights into the biographies of Melania and her son Publicola: Melania resided in Spain until being widowed in her early twenties; it was only at this point that she moved to Rome; she was her husband’s heir and de facto guardian of Publicola for more than a decade; she delayed her departure for the Holy Land until he was already a teenager and launched on his senatorial career; this included the funding of his quaestorian and praetorian games in Rome.
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