Odyssey 15.69-71 has Menelaus advise Telemachus that a host who loves or hates a guest to excess is worse than one who observes αἴσιμα (aisima; `due measure'), a word usually rendered as measure, balance or moderation. Read against the vocabulary of modern optimisation, the passage can look like an early statement of an optimisation principle: two extremes excluded, something better in between. We argue that this resemblance is misleading. The Greek text describes a tolerance interval, a set of acceptable conduct with no criterion for ranking one acceptable choice above another, rather than an interior extremum, a unique optimal point which, for a differentiable objective, is marked b... More >

Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia is the preeminent work of the Italian literature and one of the greatest of the world literature. The poem allegorically represents the soul’s journey toward God passing through Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. At each stage of the journey, Dante adapts his language to the different contexts he describes, bringing together, in a single great work, the various types of language that had previously been specific to comedy or tragedy. This is why scholars speak of pluristylism. Compared to Inferno and Purgatorio, the language of Paradiso increases in complexity and in linguistic perfection to express profound theological concepts, making the reading more d... More >

Presents the introductory editorial for the inaugural issue of this title. More >