›Humanitas‹ in the Imperial Age: From Pliny the Younger to Symmachus

Simone Mollea

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›Humanitas‹ in the Imperial Age

From Pliny the Younger to Symmachus

Simone Mollea

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2024

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This book is in the series

Volume 1 | Lumina

About this book

Open Access

This book investigates one of the most polysemic Latin words, humanitas. While the first chapter briefly retraces the history of humanitas from its origins, the book as a whole focuses on its uses in the pagan literary texts from the Trajanic (late first century CE) to the Theodosian age (late fourth century CE). The aim of this study is to explore the extent to which the different meanings usually attributed to humanitas by dictionaries (roughly ‘human nature’, ‘education and culture’, ‘philanthropy’) are much more nuanced and in continuous relation with one another, and how the use of humanitas by some authors often performs clear rhetorical and/or ideological strategies.

This book is therefore not only a lexicographical study, but pays careful attention to the wider historical and cultural contexts in which humanitas was employed. More specifically, the use of humanitas reveals the ways in which Roman authors considered themes that were at the core of their conception of culture and civilisation, such as the relationship between being learned and behaving morally, the ideas of moral nobility and clemency, the notion that a value concept can distinguish one category of men from another, or even one historical period from another.

Author / Editor information

Simone Mollea, Università di Torino / Università della Svizzera italiana, Torino, Italy.

Topics

Frontmatter Open Access Download PDF	I
Zu dieser Reihe Open Access Download PDF	VII
Zu diesem Band Open Access Download PDF	IX
Acknowledgements Open Access Download PDF	XI
Preface Open Access Download PDF	XIII
Contents Open Access Download PDF	XV
I Laying the Foundations
1 Introduction Open Access Download PDF	1
2 Humanitas from the Republican Age to that of Domitian Open Access Download PDF	46
II Pagan Humanitas in the Imperial Age
3 A New Apogee of Humanitas in the Trajanic Age: Pliny the Younger, Tacitus and Suetonius Open Access Download PDF	81
4 Trials and Educational Programmes: The Specialisation(s) of Humanitas in the Antonine Age Open Access Download PDF	134
5 Humanitas in School: [Quintilian’s] Declamationes Minores and Maiores Open Access Download PDF	182
6 The Silent Third Century and Its Exception: Eumenius’ Oratio pro instaurandis scholis Open Access Download PDF	205
7 The Age of Constantine and Another Exception: Firmicus Maternus’ Civilization Without παιδεία in the Mathesis Open Access Download PDF	215
8 Humanitas in the Thedosian Age: The Reproposition of the Trajanic Pattern? Open Access Download PDF	224
9 Back (or Forward?) to the Ontological Origins of Humanitas: The Asclepius Open Access Download PDF	317
10 Pagan Humanitas in the Imperial Age: Concluding Remarks Open Access Download PDF	330
Appendices
Abbreviations Open Access Download PDF	337
Bibliography Open Access Download PDF	339
Index Locorum Open Access Download PDF	361
Index Rerum Open Access Download PDF	373
Index Nominum Open Access Download PDF	377

Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

October 21, 2024

eBook ISBN:

9783111510507

Hardcover published on:

October 21, 2024

Hardcover ISBN:

9783111500881

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

Front matter:

18

Main content:

379

Coloured Illustrations:

2

Tables:

2

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111510507

eBook ISBN: 9783111510507

Hardcover ISBN: 9783111500881

Keywords for this book

Latin literature; Roman imperial age; History of ideas

Audience(s) for this book

Classicists, Roman and Greek historians, historians of ideas, Renaissance studies scholars

Creative Commons

BY-NC-ND 4.0

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Walter de Gruyter GmbH
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›Humanitas‹ in the Imperial Age

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About this book

Author / Editor information

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Table of contents

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